Devpolicy Talks

In global health circles, Dr Eric Goosby’s reputation precedes him. A physician by training, he has been a leader in the development and implementation of HIV/AIDS policy for 30 years and is perhaps best known for his role as the US Global AIDS Coordinator (2009-2013). In 2015, Dr Goosby accepted an appointment as the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Tuberculosis (TB), and it was in this capacity that he visited Canberra in late May 2017, during which Camilla Burkot interviewed him at the Development Policy Centre about Australia's role in the global fight against TB.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

In 1938 three Australian patrol officers – Jim Taylor, John Black and Pat Walsh – set off on an epic journey into the highlands of Papua New Guinea. Their purpose: to make contact with highland tribes who until then, had no contact with the outside world, and to explain to them that their lives were about to undergo incredible change.

Fifty years later, Jim’s daughter Meg retraced her father’s steps and met people who remembered the day the patrol arrived. Meg’s observations are combined with excerpts from her father’s journal to provide a personal and poetic narrative about an extraordinary meeting of cultures. [extract from In My Father’s Footsteps]

Dame Meg Taylor is a Papua New Guinean lawyer and diplomat. She studied at the University of PNG, received her LLB from Melbourne University and her LLM from Harvard University. She practiced law with the Office of the Public Solicitor and in the private sector, and served as a member of the Law Reform Commission of PNG. She was Ambassador of Papua New Guinea to the United States, Mexico and Canada in Washington, DC and then worked at the World Bank Group for 15 years. In August 2014, she was appointed Secretary General to the Pacific Islands Forum. Dame Meg is also Pacific Ocean Commissioner.

This podcast features the Q&A session that preceded a film screening of Dame Meg's documentary, 'My father, my country', on 22 June. The screening was presented as part of the Development Policy Centre’s PNG Project, which receives funding from the Australian Aid Program through the Pacific Governance and Leadership Precinct.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

PNG was severely impacted by the 2015-16 El Niño drought and, at some very high altitude locations, a series of destructive frosts. The drought and frosts impacted many rural villagers between mid-2015 and late 2016, with some people still severely impacted in early 2017. Impacts included: widespread shortages of drinking water; shortages of subsistence food in many places; negative effect on villagers’ health; partial or complete closure of schools; and the Fly River not being suitable for shipping for some months. The impact on food supply was greatest in four sub-regions: very high altitude places in parts of Enga, Hela and Western Highlands; much of inland lowland Western Province; several locations on the edge of the central highlands; and some island and mainland locations in Milne Bay Province.

The five speakers were closely involved in the assessment of food shortages and coordination of food distribution. Presentations will cover: a national overview of the impacts; more detailed reports on impacts and food aid in parts of Enga, Hela, Western and Milne Bay provinces; and responses by the PNG national government, donors, churches, international non-government organisations and UN agencies.

The public forum, held 7 June, was presented as part of the Development Policy Centre’s PNG Project, which receives funding from the Australian Aid Program through the Pacific Governance and Leadership Precinct.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Tropical forests are an undervalued asset in meeting the greatest global challenges of our time—averting climate change and promoting sustainable development. Despite their importance, tropical forests and their ecosystems are being destroyed at a high and even increasing rate in most forest-rich countries. The good news is that the science, economics, and politics are aligned to support a major international effort to reverse tropical deforestation.

Why Forests? Why Now? a new book by Frances Seymour and Jonah Busch, synthesizes the latest research on the importance of tropical forests in a way that is accessible to anyone interested in climate change and development and to readers already familiar with the problem of deforestation. It makes the case to decision-makers in rich countries that rewarding developing countries for protecting their forests is urgent, affordable, and achievable.

This event was co-hosted by the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics, the ANU Indonesia Project and the Development Policy Centre.

Jonah Busch is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development (CGD). He is an environmental economist whose research focuses on climate change and tropical deforestation. He is a research fellow at the Center for Effective Global Action at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the College of Environmental and Resource Sciences of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China. Prior to joining CGD Busch was the Climate and Forest Economist at Conservation International.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

This year is the first after three years of cuts in which the aid budget is slated to increase – by $84 million. While only enough to keep the aid budget growing with inflation, how will this new money be spent? Health funding has been almost halved in real terms over the last four years. Will the government release information on its long-awaited health security initiative? At this year’s aid budget breakfast, we will also review the 2016 Performance of Australian Aid report and the 2015-16 Aid Program Performance Reports.

Join the morning after the budget for the fifth annual aid budget breakfast to learn what the 2017-18 budget means for the future of Australian aid.

Speakers are included Professor Stephen Howes, Director of the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School, ANU; Jacqui De Lacy, Vice President of Global Strategy, Abt Associates; and Dr Anthony Swan, Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School, ANU.

Livestream available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zdUnYvoH2c

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

In this talk Professor Fforde will discuss how risk and uncertainty are best coped with in development practice. In doing this, he will examine the theories of change that underpin aid practitioners’ use of tools such as the logical framework approach. He will contend that in many situations we should explore methods of devising policy and organising practice that formally assume context is unpredictable and unsuited to tools like the logical framework approach. He will argue that aid work can often benefit from reconsidering the theories of change it draws upon.

Professor Adam Fforde is Professorial Fellow, Victoria Institute of Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University. He has a long career in development practice and research. His forthcoming book is Reinventing ‘development’ – the sceptical change agent.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Co-hosted by the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute and the Development Policy Centre.

As Governments expanded their activities over the years, pushing spending from around 10 per cent of GDP at the beginning of the last century to the current levels of 30 to 50 per cent of GDP, while increasing intervention through regulations, they tended to lose much of their ability to monitor well what they did. This led to problems of corruption, inefficiency, rent seeking, cronyism, and generally less equitable results in terms of economic results and income distribution. Professor Vito Tanzi will present and discuss the challenge of complexity in governments and markets in terms of tax, spending and regulation.

Vito Tanzi obtained his PhD in Economics from Harvard University and was subsequently a Professor at American University before becoming head of Tax Policy in the International Monetary Fund(IMF) from 1974 to 1981, and Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department from 1981 to 2000. He was State Secretary for Economy and Finance in the Italian Government and Senior Consultant to the Inter-American Development Bank. He is recipient of numerous awards and honours and has published widely on public finance, tax, expenditure and regulation for developed and developing countries. Publications include Public Spending in the 20th Century (Cambridge U Press, 2000) with Ludger Schknecht; Taxation and Latin American Integration (Harvard University, 2008); Peoples, Places and Policies: China, Japan and Southeast Asia (NY: Jorge Pinto Books, 2008) and Government versus Markets (Cambridge University Press: 2011). Government versus Markets was also published in China and in 2014 was chosen as one of the 8 most important financial books of the year. He has also written numerous articles on tax and globalisation, fiscal termites, corruption and the shadow economy.

Following the keynote speaker, an In Conversation panel discussion will be held with Vito Tanzi, Miranda Stewart – Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, Roger Bradbury – National Security College and Stephen Howes – Development Policy Centre.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

This talk provides a survey of recent economic developments in Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) since the end of the resource boom in 2014. The specific focus of the discussion will be on the country’s exchange rate policy. Theory suggests that the real exchange rate (RER) should depreciate following the observed fall in commodity prices. In practice, however, the imposition of foreign exchange controls has led to a large backlog in foreign currency orders suggesting that the kina is significantly overvalued. A related paper estimating the extent to which PNG’s RER is currently misaligned will be discussed. The results of the paper suggest that the kina should depreciate by about 20 per cent. Otherwise PNG is likely to pay high economic costs as real overvaluation sustained through foreign exchange restrictions led to resource misallocation, lower economic growth, black markets, and ultimately a balance of payments crisis in many other developing countries in the past.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

Africa has a rich history; old and diverse cultures; and abundant and varied natural resources. Yet, a large majority of Africans remain poor, disenfranchised and oppressed. For five and half centuries, the trajectory of Africa’s autonomous development was distorted by the intervention of nascent Europe: the slave trade, the colonial venture and the Cold War. A legacy of the colonial system, the prototype independent African state has failed to deliver freedom, democracy and prosperity, giving rise to a crisis of legitimacy and relevance.

Ambassador Andebrhan Welde Giorgis is President of Eri-Platform, an international civic association promoting inclusive dialogue on vital national, regional and international issues impacting Eritrea and the Horn of Africa. He is also Senior Expert in the Global Governance Institute, founding board member of the European Centre for Electoral Support and Brand Ambassador of Wallonia, Belgium. He served as a university president, central bank governor, Member of Parliament, ambassador to the EU and seven EU Member States, Permanent Representative to UNESCO and IMO, Special Envoy to the African Great Lakes Region, and Commissioner for Coordination with the UN Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia. He has published several articles and his recent book is Eritrea at a Crossroads: A Narrative of Triumph, Betrayal and Hope.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].

In this podcast, you'll hear a discussion forum, jointly organised by the Development Policy Centre and the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE), which is the latest in a series on the evaluation of Australian aid.

The event focuses on the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's (DFAT)new aid evaluation policy and two recent evaluations.

Recently, DFAT has overhauled its approach to evaluation, with a new Aid Evaluation Policy and, for the first time, an Annual Aid Evaluation Plan - both available on the ODE website. The Head of ODE will explain what these mean, and what difference they will make.

The $336 million, ten-year Eastern Indonesia Roads Improvement Program was one of Australia's largest ever aid projects, and one of the most successful. This recent ODE evaluation assesses its results, and draws out the lessons for aid-funded infrastructure programs elsewhere.

Remote service delivery in PNG is always a challenge. But a recent evaluation of remote health patrols run by Australian Doctors International (ADI) in New Ireland from 2011 to 2015 suggests that this is a model that works. Hear from the evaluator on her findings, and from the ADI Chief Executive Officer on how ADI is responding.

ODE is an operationally independent unit within DFAT that measures and reports on the effectiveness of the Australian aid program.

Devpolicy Talks is the podcast of the Australian National University's Development Policy Centre.

Read and subscribe to our daily blogs at devpolicy.org.

Learn more about our research and join our public events at devpolicy.anu.edu.au.

Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and X for updates on blog posts, publications and events.

You can send feedback, and ideas for episodes too, to [email protected].