Devpolicy Talks

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...

Dalsie Baniala is the first ni-Vanuatu to hold the position of Telecommunications and Radiocommunications Regulator (TRR). She sat down with Tess Newton Cain to discuss the work of her office and the challenges she and her team are facing, as part of the Pacific Conversations series. Read a summary of their conversation here: http://devpolicy.org/telecommunications-regulation-in-vanuatu-in-convers...

Labour mobility is increasingly recognized as critical for the Pacific island region. But opportunities to migrate are unevenly distributed across the Pacific, which includes both some of the most integrated and some of the most isolated countries in the world. What could be possible by 2040 if the potential of labour mobility were to be fully realized? What actions can sending and receiving count...

This seminar will discuss some of the compounded challenges of implementing a donor-driven reform and water resources management in Lebanon, a paradigmatic fragile, politically and socially divided, aid dependent country. Despite a major water sector reform started over a decade ago, and substantial donor pressure to promote it, water resources management remains a core sustainable development cha...

Climate finance and in particular adaptation finance has never been higher on the climate change agenda. The Paris Agreement in December 2015 confirmed the goal of providing US$100 billion each year by 2020 for climate action in developing countries, with balanced allocation between adaptation and mitigation, and agreed to set a new, longer-term collective goal by 2025. Adaptation finance is of pa...

That politics has a defining influence over development prospects is now broadly accepted amongst leading development theorists and agencies alike. However, there is less agreement over which forms of politics matter most, how these can be conceptualised and what kinds of policy implications flow from thinking politically about development. This seminar addresses these questions by presenting the...

In this public lecture delivered on 2 June 2016, Professor Richard Bedford takes a long-term perspective, looking both backwards and forwards, at Pacific migration and the approach of Australia and New Zealand to it. Between 2007 and 2010 the late Graeme Hugo and Dr Richard Bedford met several times with the Australia New Zealand Immigration Forum, an annual meeting of senior officials from the De...

Australia currently holds or has contracted other countries to hold 3,052 people in immigration detention, including 50 children in Nauru (data from end March 2016). Most are from developing countries, including Iran, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China and Afghanistan. The Global Detention Project is a Geneva-based non-government organisation formed in 2014 to investigate the use of immigration detention a...

Speakers: Anna Solomon, Secretary, Department for Community Development and Religion, PNG; Denga Ilave, Operations Manager for Femili PNG; Kymberley Kepore, Chief Executive Officer of the Oil Search Foundation. Chaired by Sally Moyle, DFAT. Rates of family and sexual violence in Papua New Guinea are among the highest in the world, with some estimating that 70 per cent of women experience physical...

Speaker: Dr Albert Schram, Vice-Chancellor of Papua New Guinea’s University of Technology. Despite its age, the PNG university system is not yet mature. The challenges regarding the quantity and reliability of its funding, and recent legislative changes have not made things better. Efforts to create a solid governance structure, and develop the PNG University of Technology despite its financial co...

This discussion focused on the recent Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE) evaluation report, Building Women’s Leadership: the contribution of Australia Awards Scholarships. This was the second part of our April 2016 aid evaluations forum. Speakers: Dr Karen Ovington, Assistant Director, ODE, DFAT; Ms Cheryl Johnson, Assistant Secretary, Scholarships and A...

This recording is the first part of our aid evaluations forum held in April 2016. It looks at The Performance of Australian Aid report, which is the government’s own annual report card on the aid program. Speakers: Mr Scott Dawson, First Assistant Secretary, Contracting and Aid Management Division, DFAT; Professor Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, ANU Devpolicy Talks is the podca...

At our fourth annual aid budget breakfast the morning after the 2016-17 budget a panel of experts discussed what the 2016-17 budget means for the future of Australian aid. Speakers: Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School, ANU; Jacqui De Lacy General Manaager, Global Strategy, Abt JTA; and Anthony Swan, Research Fellow, Development Policy Centre.   https://crawford.anu....

This is the recording of the launch of the 2015 New Zealand Stakeholder Survey in Wellington, NZ, in March 2016. Devpolicy's Terence Wood outlines the key findings of the survey, with discussion from Dr Wren Green, Director of NZ’s Council for International Development. More details on the survey here: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/devpolicy/stakeholder-survey Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the A...

Speakers: The Hon Sir Julius Chan MP, GCL GCMG KBE CBE, Governor, New Ireland Province, Papua New Guinea; His Excellency Mr Charles Lepani, Papua New Guinea’s High Commissioner to Australia; Mr Bill Farmer AO, Former Australian High Commissioner to Papua New Guinea. Born on a remote island to a migrant Chinese father and an indigenous mother, Sir Julius Chan overcame poverty, discrimination and fa...

Speakers: Sahar Yassin, Humanitarian Advocacy Lead, World Vision Jordan; Emma Wanchap, Acting Manager of Policy and Government Relations, World Vision Australia; Kevin Boreham, Lecturer, ANU College of Law; Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre. How do we even begin to think about the scale of the Syrian conflict, when so many lives are endangered every day? World Vision and Europe’s...

Research Officer Ashlee Betteridge interviewed Abdul Wasey Mullahzada, outgoing Medical Coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières‎ (MSF) in Papua New Guinea, about MSF's new report on the family and sexual violence epidemic in PNG, ‘Return to Abuser’. Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.  Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devp...

As the Syrian conflict reaches five years, much of the humanitarian world’s attention is focused on addressing the needs of the millions of refugees who have fled. But there are also many who have remained within Syria’s borders, and those who have stayed to serve them. Dr Lama Mouakea is among them. She is the Executive Director of the Syrian Family Planning Association (SFPA), a member associati...

Over one million refugees and asylum seekers entered Europe in 2015, and over 100,000 entered in the first two months of 2016 alone, according to IOM estimates. What has the impact been on European aid budgets and policies? In this interview, Camilla Burkot discusses these and related issues with Wolfgang Jamann, Secretary General and CEO of CARE International. Blog available here: http://devpolic...

Chair: Chris Roche, La Trobe University In this submitted interactive session panellists at the 2016 Australasian Aid Conference, panellists discussed and debated forces that have led to change and continuity, and the aid policy making process more broadly. Panellists: David Hudson, La Trobe University and ANU; Jo Spratt, ANU; Ben Day, ANU; and Jennifer vanHeerde-Hudson, La Trobe University and AN...

Speaker: Dr Mark Dybul, Executive Director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Dr Dybul has worked on HIV and public health for more than 25 years as a clinician, scientist, teacher and administrator. After graduating from Georgetown Medical School in Washington DC, Dybul joined the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, where he conducted basic and clinical...

This submitted panel, developed in conjunction with the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium (SLRC), discussed livelihoods, basic services and social protection in conflict-affected situations in eight countries – DRC, Uganda, South Sudan, Sierra Leone, Nepal, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – based on a six-year panel research program led by a team based at the Overseas Development Institut...

Speaker: Kitty van der Heijden, Director, World Resources Institute Europe Office Topic: After the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and with massive funding commitments coming out of the Paris climate change discussions, the international community now faces the real work of translating vision and commitment into action. Some countries think the SDGs will make little differenc...

Speaker: Peter Varghese is the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Mr Varghese took up his position as Secretary on 3 December 2012. Prior to that, Mr Varghese held a wide range of senior positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra and overseas. He was Australia’s High Commissioner to India (2009 to 2012) and Malaysia (2000 to 2002), and also served i...

Speakers: Frank Jotzo, Crawford School (chair); Howard Bamsey, Adjunct Professor, Regulatory Institutions Network, ANU and formerly Australia’s Special Envoy on Climate Change; Jaehyoung Lee, Professor, Korea University School of Law and Legal Advisor to Korean delegation to UN climate change negotiations; Professor Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, ANU. The Paris negotiations on...