Devpolicy Talks

Foreign Minister The Hon Julie Bishop MP delivered the opening address at the 2017 Australasian Aid Conference on February 15, held at Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. In the address, Minister Bishop announced several new initiatives and spoke of the strategic importance of the aid program. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Chair: Stephen Howes, ANU Speakers: Robin Davies, ANU Adam Kamradt-Scott, University of Sydney Phoebe Wynn-Pope, Australian Red Cross Paul McPhun, Medecins Sans Frontieres Australia Jamie Isbister, DFAT The humanitarian aid system is in crisis. It’s a crisis of identity, financing and conduct. Agencies set up to deal with the immediate impacts of t...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Chair: Joel Negin What does Australian aid need more of, or less of? What are its ailments and what shape its cures? This panel presents the best, the most original, the most transformational, the most innovative ideas to get more bang from the 4 billion dollar buck that is the Australian aid program. Following the 3-Minute-Thesis format, rival adv...

Plenary session, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference Speakers: Guo Peiyuan, General Manager, SynTao; Jeon Hyunjin, Manager, Corporate Social Responsibility Team, LG Electronics HQ; Simon Cramp, Director of Private Sector Development, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; Prabodh Saxena, Principal Secretary, Government of Himachal Pradesh. Chaired by Anthea Mulakala of The Asia Foundation. Involvin...

Keynote address, 2017 Australasian Aid Conference, ANU Speaker: Michael Woolcock, Lead Social Development Specialist, World Bank and Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard University Despite what today’s headlines might convey, life for most people in most developing countries has never been better. This should be rightly celebrated, but improving basic levels of human welfare from a low base was the...

Robin Davies interviews Publish What You Fund’s London-based CEO, Rupert Simons and Elise Dufief, the organisation’s Research and Monitoring Manager, who is in the process of reviewing the methodology used for the Aid Transparency Index, to discuss the current issues in aid transparency. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read an...

The independent Tax Review Committee (TRC) established by the Government of PNG recently completed a comprehensive review of the country’s tax system involving extensive and transparent stakeholder consultation over the course of two years. This culminated in two volumes of reports (inclusive of significant economic and tax reform recommendations) which were formally presented to the PNG Governmen...

For generations of young Australians with a passion for social justice, volunteering in developing or indigenous communities has been a rite of passage. Bill Armstrong has been deeply involved in this movement since the 1960s, working with organisations such as the Overseas Service Bureau (now Australian Volunteers International), and Indigenous Community Volunteers. Robin Davies discussed his wor...

It is well known that gender-based and sexual violence are major problems facing Papua New Guinea. What is less widely recognized are the grassroots efforts underway to combat these problems, and the individuals leading those efforts. Everlyne Sap is one of those individuals. She is a gender advocate and chairperson of the Family and Sexual Violence Steering Committee of the Restorative Justice In...

In this podcast, part of a series of talks from the recent PNG Update, you will hear a collection of speeches showcasing the ANU-UPNG Partnership. In the first part, Nelson Nema, Professor Stephen Howes, Rohan Fox and Dr Manoj Pandey provide an update on PNG’s current economic performance. Following this are Peter Kanaparo and Dr Grant Walton, with a discussion on the unintended consequences of th...

In this podcast, part of a series of speeches from the recent PNG Update, you will hear Mr. Bruce Davis, Australian High Commissioner to PNG; reflect on the diversity and strategic importance of the AUS – PNG relationship. Charles Abel, Honorable Minister for National Planning at the PNG Government, also speaks. Abel discusses the importance of PNG’s transition to a sustainable economy, and arguin...

During times of disaster, people naturally want to help. Unfortunately, they sometimes choose to do so in ways that do more harm and create more chaos: like emptying their medicine cabinets of expired goods and shipping them off overseas. Pharmacist Phillip Passmore has helped swamped local health systems deal with dodgy or unneeded drugs in post-tsunami Aceh and much, much more during his fascina...

During times of disaster, people naturally want to help. Unfortunately, they sometimes choose to do so in ways that do more harm and create more chaos: like emptying their medicine cabinets of expired goods and shipping them off overseas. Pharmacist Phillip Passmore has helped swamped local health systems deal with dodgy or unneeded drugs in post-tsunami Aceh and much, much more during his fascina...

Disaster risk reduction, and its interface with climate risk management and adaptation, is a topic of increasing interest in international development, particularly for those working in the Pacific. Robert Glasser is the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction in the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, otherwise known as UNISDR. Camilla Burkot spoke with Robe...

Speaker: Mr Kyle Peters, Interim Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Operations, The World Bank. The global community is facing extraordinary challenges which call for a new approach to ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable are protected. At the same time, the international community has significantly raised and accelerated its ambitions to achieve the Susta...

In a keynote address at the 2016 PNG Update (held at the University of Papua New Guinea, November 3-4), Professor Betty Lovai, Dean of the UPNG School of Humanities and Social Science, discussed the challenges and barriers facing Papua New Guinean women leaders. You can find a transcript of Prof Lovai's presentation, and more information about the conference, here: https://devpolicy.crawford.anu.e...

Dr Muhammad Musa is the Executive Director of BRAC, the Bangladesh-based international NGO that has grown to become the world’s largest NGO (by number of employees). During a recent trip to Australia sponsored by DFAT, Dr Musa met with Camilla Burkot to share some insights from BRAC’s experience of pursuing financial self-sustainability, developing and scaling-up evidence-based programs, and the c...

Gender inequality and violence against women are major development challenges facing the Asia-Pacific region. In a wide-ranging conversation hosted by UN Women National Committee Australia and the United Nations Association of Australia (UNAA) in Canberra on 11 October 2016, Anna-Karin Jatfors (Deputy Director, UN Women Asia and the Pacific) and Melissa Alvarado (Ending Violence Against Women Prog...

To help mark the Asian Development Bank’s half-century, a panel of eminent speakers shared their insights on Asia-Pacific development over the past 50 years and the relevance of the institution in current times. Speakers: Professor Ron Duncan, ANU; Mr Stephen Groff, Vice President, Asian Development Bank; Professor Hal Hill, ANU; Ms Annmaree O’Keeffe AM, Lowy Institute and Dr Matthew Dornan (chair...

The World Bank, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT), and Overseas Development Institute (ODI) recently released a report that makes the case for adopting a problem-driven approach to public financial management reform in Pacific Island countries. The report, which includes the results of detailed case studies of reform experience...

In this podcast, Devpolicy welcomes John Ma’o Kali, CMG, OBE, Secretary, Department of Personnel Management, Papua New Guinea Government. The Papua New Guinea’s Department of Personnel Management plays a critical role as a central agency in the Government’s policy initiatives and implementation of the Public Sector Reforms. You will hear Mr John Ma’o Kali, Secretary of Papua New Guinea’s Departmen...

Robin Davies interviews Helen Evans for our Aid Profiles series, discussing her stellar career in global health. Read the full aid profile here: http://devpolicy.org/aidprofiles/2016/10/19/helen-evans-a-decade-on-the-frontiers-of-global-health/ Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy....

When asked by then Immigration Minister Tony Burke to provide services to asylum seeker children on Nauru in 2013, Save the Children Australia was faced with a clear dilemma. The Government’s policy was a clear breach of international law, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child. If Save the Children provided services, there was a risk that it may be considered complicit in that breach...

In the second week of August this year, Papua New Guinea’s national newspapers reported that the customary landowners of the Hides gas field, the primary source of raw material for PNG’s Liquified Natural Gas project, were protesting and threatening to ‘turn off the taps’. This was because they had still not not received significant amounts of the money that was owing to them under a series of dev...

The Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) is an operationally independent unit within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) that measures and reports on the effectiveness of the Australian aid program. This forum, which was jointly organised by the Development Policy Centre and ODE, was the latest in a series with the aim of profiling and discussing ODE evaluations and reports. Th...