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.

This event focused on ODE’s recent report on teacher training and its latest review of operational evaluations.

'Investing in Teachers' analyses DFAT’s experience with and identifies lessons for improving teacher development policies and programs. 'Review of Operational Evaluations Completed in 2014' examines the quality of 35 DFAT aid evaluations.

ODE staff presented the reports, DFAT staff responded, and speakers from the Development Policy Centre offered an independent perspective.

This podcast, part 1 of 2, focuses on teacher evaluations.

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.

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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-conversation-with-dalsie-baniala-20160809

A full transcript of the podcast can be found here: http://devpolicy.org/pdf/blog/Transcript_Pacific-Conversations-Dalsie-Baniala-Jul2016.pdf

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.

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

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 countries take to make this a reality? The new joint ANU-World Bank report Pacific Possible: Labour Mobility answers these questions. It sets out pathways to expand Pacific labour mobility, detailing policy options and requirements for both sending and receiving countries. And it quantifies the massive gains that these reforms would bring about for sending countries.

This podcast summarizes a report written by Richard Curtain, Matthew Dornan and Stephen Howes of the Development Policy Centre, and Jesse Doyle of the World Bank, with input from Manjula Luthria. The report is part of the Pacific Possible series – researching long-term, transformative opportunities for the economic development of Pacific Island countries.

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 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 challenge for Lebanon. The conditional, generic, and prescriptive approach of the donors in driving the reform was confronted with a fragmented socio-political landscape and weak institutions. This resulted in an ambiguous formulation of the reform, a slow and uncertain implementation, further loss of institutional coherence, and at best no improvement in social, environmental or economic sustainability. The talk will shed some light on the various stages of this reform and what lessons may inform future aid initiatives in Lebanon and other fragmented post-war states such as Iraq or Syria.

Rim El Kadi is currently Assistant Registrar-Student Systems at The Australian National University and a Research Associate at the Development Policy Centre. Rim El Kadi’s research interests include public sector management and reform in developing countries, sustainable development, and aid. Her PhD research covered the water sector reform in Lebanon, with a particular focus on the role of aid and development agencies in promoting reform and sustainable development, in the context of a weak state and a fragmented social fabric.

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].

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 particular relevance for Pacific island countries, which are among the states in the world most vulnerable to climate change. Australia is one of the main providers of assistance for climate change adaptation in the region. Other forms of finance in response to climate change impacts are also increasingly advocated, including finance for loss and damage. The regional strategy for climate change and disaster resilient development is still to be finalized.

This panel brings together experts on international climate change policy and climate finance in the Pacific. Presenters will discuss the extent and nature of climate financing in the Pacific, its governance, and Australia’s contribution.

Speakers include:

Jonathan Pickering, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance, University of Canberra

Carola Betzold, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Antwerp, and Visiting Research Fellow, Development Policy Centre, Crawford School, ANU

Ian Fry, Lecturer, Fenner School, ANU, and Ambassador for Climate Change and Environment for the Government of Tuvalu

George Carter, PhD Candidate, State Society and Governance in Melanesia Program, ANU

This panel is co-hosted by the Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre and the University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance.

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].

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 key findings of a five-year comparative investigation into the politics of development in Africa and Asia. Employing a version of the ‘political settlements’ framework that has gained popularity amongst development agencies of late, this work examined how power and politics shape inclusive development in a range of policy domains, including economic growth, natural resource governance, social provisioning and women’s empowerment.

In conceptual terms, the analysis emphasises the interplay between political settlements and the politics of specific policy domains, the power of ideas as well as incentives, and of the need to reposition political settlements analysis as a mid-range theory that can usefully explain particular puzzles of development rather than development itself. Policy-wise, the findings suggest the importance of ensuring that policy reform efforts are carefully attuned to the incentives and ideas that flow from different kinds of political settlement, and that normative efforts to promote ‘inclusive’ and ‘accountable’ institutions need to be rebalanced by a stronger focus on building state capacity, particularly through bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness. Although much of this work echoes calls to move beyond the good governance agenda in favour of ‘thinking politically and working differently’, it also draw attention to the perils of aligning development interventions too closely with existing forms of power and politics.

Samuel Hickey is the Research Director of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) Research Centre, and Professor of Politics and Development, Global Development Institute, University of Manchester.

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 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 Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Department of Labour (NZ), to discuss population movement in the Pacific. An outcome of this interaction was a report entitled Population movement in the Pacific: a perspective on future prospects in which it was argued that greater convergence of policy relating to labour migration of Pacific peoples could make a significant contribution to development in the region. Four years later, after protracted negotiations over the Parliament and Civic Education Rebate plus trade and associated mobility agreements, a more coherent ANZ approach to Pacific labour migration is emerging. Are there prospects for further coherence in immigration policy that might contribute to alleviating pressures in the Pacific neighbourhood for greater access to opportunities for work and residence overseas over the next 30 years? The presentation addressed this question with particular reference to the atoll territories of the central Pacific.

Dr Richard Bedford QSO, FRSNZ is Emeritus Professor at the University of Waikato and President of the Royal Society of New Zealand. He is a specialist in migration research and since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement in the Asia-Pacific region. He is currently working on implications for New Zealand and Australia of population developments and migration trends in the Pacific over the next 30-40 years, including the impact of climate change on migration.

Professor Brian Opeskin, Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University was the discussant for the lecture.

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].

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 as a response to global migration. The Development Policy Centre’s Associate Director spoke with its Executive Director, Michael Flynn, shortly before the 14 June 2016 launch of the project’s new website and online database at the UN’S Geneva headquarters. Timed to coincide with a meeting of the Human Rights Council, the launch was based on a case study of Australia and its neighbours. Michael Flynn talks about the origins of the Global Detention Project and its plans for the future, Australia’s immigration detention policies and practices in a global context, and the role of international organisations in connection with immigration detention.

Michael Flynn holds a BA in Philosophy from DePaul University in the United States and an MA and PhD in International Studies from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. He previously worked as a project director at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC; as a project coordinator at the Graduate Institute’s Programme for the Study of Global Migration; and as an associate editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. His research has been supported by the Swiss Network for International Studies, the Geneva International Academic Network, the Pew International Journalism Program, and the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Blog available here: http://devpolicy.org/everybody-needs-good-neighbours-australias-immigration-detention-policies-global-context-20160614

Full transcript available here: http://devpolicy.org/pdf/blog/Transcript_interview-with-Michael-Flynn-27May2016.pdf

The Global Detention Project’s country profiles and other publications are at www.globaldetentionproject.org.

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].

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 or sexual assault in their lifetime. Children are also significantly affected. While much is said about the levels of violence, less is heard about important work being done in all sectors of Papua New Guinea to address this pervasive issue. The new approaches being taken warrant broader attention both within and outside of Papua New Guinea.

At this event, the Development Policy Centre and the Lowy Institute brought together a panel of exceptional Papua New Guinean leaders from government, civil society and the private sector.

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].

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 constraints and difficult operating environment, contain many lessons for universities in developing countries. Internationalisation – engagement with Australian and other foreign universities – has been a critical key to unlocking Unitech’s potential.

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].