Devpolicy Talks

Australian foreign aid has changed considerably in the last 20 years. Dr Terence Wood discusses the findings of a recently published report that examines the changing nature of Australian government aid through the lens of publicly available data on aid flows, which provide evidence of change and allow direct comparisons between Australia and other OECD Development Assistance Committee donors. The...

Charles Scheiner presents the 2021 economic survey of Timor-Leste, outlining  the current economic situation, particularly in relation to the state budget, and the dominance of the Petroleum Fund in state finances. He also looks at future oil and gas possibilities, including Greater Sunrise and the Tasi Mane petroleum infrastructure project, and argues regardless of the paths Timor-Leste chooses t...

The Memorandum of Understanding podcast documentary series was formerly separate from Devpolicy Talks. Its back catalogue has now been merged into Devpolicy Talks Season 10. The Quran and the Bible are not widely regarded as gender equality documents, but in Indonesia, Solomon Islands, and remote Indigenous communities in Australia, these religious texts are being used to combat the very problems...

The Memorandum of Understanding podcast documentary series was formerly separate from Devpolicy Talks. Its back catalogue has now been merged into Devpolicy Talks Season 10. Can travelogues reach recesses of the mind and prompt reflection in ways that extensively footnoted aid reports cannot? We speak to aid worker and author of The Rising Tide , Tom Bamforth, about what he learned from journeys o...

The Memorandum of Understanding podcast documentary series was formerly separate from Devpolicy Talks. Its back catalogue has now been merged into Devpolicy Talks Season 10. Aid is a darned sight livelier than that that is described in the bloodless language of official records and reports. So what do chlorinated phrases in development like capacity building look like when done right? We begin in...

The economic costs of COVID-19 continue to mount, globally and in the Pacific. But what is the damage in the Pacific, and how are Pacific governments responding? In this webinar, panellists explore the economic damage caused by COVID-19 and the responses Pacific governments are taking. Professor Stephen Howes presents an overview based on the Pacific Covid Economic Database compiled by the Develop...

Historically, Australia has lacked a coherent policy to attract immigrants with less extensive formal training and education, despite the needs of its ageing population and labour market.  The Center for Global Development has recently concluded a project with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, which has produced two papers. Michael Clemens outlines the findings of the first p...

It is time to fundamentally reframe the research agenda on migration, remittances, payments and development. Many policymakers in the developing world, and researchers, tend to view migrant remittances as windfall income, rather than as returns on investment, which is how families with migrants tend to see remittances. Migration is thus, among other things, a strategy for financial management in p...

In this panel event at the 2020 Australasian AID conference, John Langmore makes the case for stronger government and civil society commitment to conflict prevention and peacebuilding. Joanna Pradela argues that Australia should adopt a feminist approach to foreign policy, one that is grounded in gender equality. Pierre van der Eng analyses the rapid expansion of Australia’s foreign aid to Indones...

In the Pacific over the past three decades, women’s domestic violence services have led advocacy for policy for increased gender equality, women’s human rights and in engaging men and boys as allies and advocates in prevention of violence against women. In partnership with regional governments, development partners and Australia’s aid and development resources, this model has provided agency, lead...

In November 2018, the Australian Government announced the Pacific step-up, taking its engagement with the Pacific to a new level. Despite this shift, new research finds that many people in the Pacific are concerned Australia does not know how to engage successfully as part of the Pacific community.  This panel event at the 2020 Australasian Aid Conference outlines the key findings of research comm...

The welfare gains from increasing cross-border labour mobility are likely to be several times larger than those from complete trade liberalisation, offering significant benefits to migrants, receiving, and sending countries. This panel outlines the case for international labour mobility, summarises the lessons learned from the first year of Australia’s new Pacific Labour Scheme, and provides an ov...

Offering social assistance programs has become an increasingly prominent strategy to alleviate poverty in many parts of the developing world, including in Indonesia. Drawing on Indonesia’s decades-long experience in developing social assistance programs, government officials and a leading evidence-based policy research institution, The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Southeast Asia (J-PAL SE...

The language and theory of ‘aid’ is outdated. But something like it is still needed as the world faces huge common challenges, new and old. In this keynote address, Jonathan Glennie sets out a new approach for the 21st century: global public investment. He proposes five paradigm shifts for the future of concessional international public finance, as the world of international development moves on f...

In this keynote address delivered on 19 February at the 2020 Australasian AID Conference, Alex Hawke, Minister for International Development and the Pacific, outlines the key trends in the Indo-Pacific region affecting Australia’s development partners and shaping its new international development policy. He also discusses Australia’s longstanding commitment to the region and its Pacific step-up, a...

Australia’s aid program to PNG is its biggest, its highest profile and most controversial. In this insightful keynote panel at the 2020 Australasian AID conference, Jonathan Pryke outlines the findings of his research into Australia’s aid program to PNG, His Excellency John Kali CMG OBE discusses key changes in the way Australian assistance is being delivered, Terence Wood presents the findings of...

In this keynote address, Dr Radhika Coomaraswamy discusses the evolution of the women, peace and security agenda, from representation and participation of women in peace processes, transformative justice and women combatants to livelihoods and empowerment of women in the post-conflict era and the role women play, and can play, in the prevention of conflict. Drawing on her personal experiences in t...

In 2019 the Nobel prize for economics went to three economists who have promoted the use and importance of Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in development economics and interventions. But how useful are RCTs in the real world of development assistance? And what more generally needs to be done to improve the quality and impact of impact evaluations, and to promote learning in aid? Panellists: The H...

In November 2019, Professor Stephen Howes sat down with Michael Kocher and Matt Reed of the Aga Khan Foundation to discuss the work of the Foundation, one of the ten development arms of the Aga Khan Development Network. Professor Stephen Howes is the Director of the Development Policy Centre at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University Michael Kocher is the global Ge...

Family is the basic foundation for social and economic development across the world, and particularly in Papua New Guinea (PNG). However, this foundation is often challenged by family and sexual violence (FSV). In order to support policymaking that fosters healthy, safe and secure families, research was conducted in Lae in 2018 and 2019 to better understand men’s and women’s perspectives of FSV. J...

Should aid programs micromanage their work? Or should they leave staff on the ground the space to decide for themselves? In this presentation Dan Honig will speak to the key findings of his book, Navigation by Judgment, an in-depth attempt at answering these questions. Dan’s book draws on a novel database of more than 14,000 discrete development projects across nine agencies, and eight qualitative...

On Wednesday 1 May, former World Bank Vice President Jim Adams presented his reflections on the performance of the Australian aid program. He is stepping down as Chair of DFAT's Independent Evaluation Committee after seven years in the role, and joined us at ANU to discuss how to build a robust performance culture based on accountability, transparency, learning and appropriate risk management. Dev...

In a talk at ANU on 12 April, Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP discussed how a Labor government will tackle tax avoidance in Australia and our region, and announced a new policy initiative to help crack down on multinational tax avoidance and restore fairness into the system. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our dai...

Chinese development cooperation in Asia and the Pacific is growing rapidly. In this keynote panel at the 2019 Australasian Aid Conference, Chinese experts shared their insights on the rationale, aspirations and challenges of Chinese development cooperation, particularly in relation to the Belt and Road Initiative, responsible investment, the new development cooperation agency, and China's engageme...

Masood Ahmed, President of the Center for Global Development, gave a keynote address at the 2019 Australasian Aid Conference on 20 February. He discussed growing debt in low-income countries, and asked whether we are heading for another debt crisis. He also spoke about whether this is different from the debt crisis 20 years ago, what is driving debt growing in low-income countries, what can be don...