Devpolicy Talks

The Australia Pacific Training Coalition (APTC) is a major Australian government foreign aid initiative that commenced in 2008, that has spent over $350 million, and that has turned out over 15,000 graduates with Australian qualifications. In a recent Devpolicy Discussion Paper, Richard Curtain and Stephen Howes analyse graduate tracer surveys and show that employment outcomes for APTC graduate job-seekers have worsened over the last decade. This is mainly because of falling demand for the trades and hospitality qualifications APTC has offered since inception. They suggest a more demand-led approach to course selection and a greater focus on promoting international migration opportunities to improve employment outcomes for APTC graduates. In a related Policy Brief they propose that APTC should redirect its labour mobility efforts and focus on the Temporary Skill Shortage visa and those graduates who are eligible to migrate to Australia as skilled workers.

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Speakers:
Dr Richard Curtain is a Research Fellow specialising in Pacific labour mobility at the Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University.

Professor Stephen Howes is Director of the Development Policy Centre and Professor of Economics at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

Chair:
Sadhana Sen is Regional Communications Adviser at the Development  Policy Centre, The Australian National University.

Photo credit: Flickr/DFAT

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].

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.

Across the Pacific, communities are labelled as vulnerable because of the threats posed by climate change. And what do international development programs believe is needed to address this vulnerability? Resilience. 

This is a memorandum of understanding the unreasonable expectations aid places on local communities to deal with what are really global problems. We turn to Vanuatu where these buzzwords have been siphoned into a set of committees called CDCs ­– community disaster and climate change committees – and explore the issue with Dr Siobhan McDonnell, scholar at the Crawford School of the ANU, anthropologist, and legal adviser to the government of Vanuatu, and Jocelyn Loughman, a graduate student at the ANU and formerly a senior bureaucrat in the Vanuatu government. 

Recommended reading: For more words on CDCs, read Siobhan’s article “Other Dark Sides of Resilience”. 

Memorandum of Understanding production team:

Visual credits: Vanuatu’s northern province post Tropical Cyclone Donna in 2018. Photo courtesy of Jocelyn Loughman.

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].

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. These comparisons help highlight where Australian aid conforms with international norms of good giving, where Australia lags behind the global community, and where it is a global leader.

Speaker:
Dr Terence Wood is a Research Fellow at the Development Policy Centre. His research focuses on the domestic political economy of aid in donor countries, public opinion about aid, NGOs, aid effectiveness in poorly governed states, and Melanesian electoral politics. 

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Chair:
Ashlee Betteridge, Manager,  Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

Photo Credit: DFAT/Timothy Tobing/CC BY 2.0

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].

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 to follow, investing in its people – through education, health and nutrition – is essential. 

The presentation is a draft of a forthcoming paper in the Pacific Survey series, published in the Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies journal.

Speaker:
Charles Scheiner is a researcher at La’o Hamutuk, the Timor-Leste Institute for Development Monitoring and Analysis, an independent, non-partisan, Timorese civil society research organisation. He specialises in the effects of oil and gas extraction, including on economics, governance, environment and revenue management. 

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Chair:
Professor Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

Photo credit: Charles Scheiner

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].

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 religious institutions often condone: gender inequality and gender-based violence. 

Faith and spirituality are deeply twined into the cultural fabric of these places. As a result, the language of custom and religion has much greater resonance than the vernaculars of human rights, law and feminism. In order to understand why faith is so central, how it has re-aligned with progressive values, and what role it must play in development efforts, we go on a five-person pilgrimage through the region. We speak with Dina Lumbantobing, co-founder of the Indonesian NGO, PASADA; Lies Marcoes, Executive Director of Indonesian policy institute, Rumahkitab; Tri Hastuti Nur Rochimah from the Aisyiyah National Board; Solomon Islands theologian Rev. Cliff Bird; and Grant Paulson, a Birri-gubba and Bundjalung man who works as faith and development adviser for World Vision Australia. 

Please be aware that this episode contains descriptions of sexual violence.

Recommended reading: We’ve gathered together extra reflections on the topic for the Devpolicy blog.

Memorandum of Understanding production team:

Visual credits: Lies Marcoes facilitates a discussion on child marriage prevention with religious leaders and government officials in Cirebon West Java. Photo courtesy of Lies Marcoes.

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].

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 on boat, helicopter, scooter and rattletrap bus in the islands of the Pacific. In the argot of aid, we also conducted some key informant interviews with those Tom met in the course of his travels, including Tataua Pese from Tuvalu and Linda Kenni from Vanuatu.

This is a memorandum of understanding about an aid worker in what the Tongan Fijian writer Epeli Hau’ofa called ‘this sea of islands’, of going beyond the tarmac road and seeking as many threads of a story as possible. We also uncover one of the few silver linings of COVID-19. 

Recommended reading: Tom’s book is available here. Gordon has written a Development Policy Centre blog about travel writing and the courage to write candidly on aid. We also touch on the work of a number of wonderful Pacific authors in the podcast: Epeli Hau’ofa, Teresia Teaiwa and Regis Stella. 

Memorandum of Understanding production team:

Visual credits: Airstrip sports in Tuvalu. Photo courtesy of Tom Bamforth.

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].

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 Dili, Timor Leste, at Agora Food Studio, a restaurant set up by two slightly world-weary aid workers who found that they could achieve more in setting up a place that celebrates East Timorese food and developing East Timorese chefs and restauranteurs than through all those reports that they'd previously been slaving over.

We hear from Alva Lim and Mark Notaras, the two architects of Agora, as well as the restaurant’s project manager Paula Torres. Paula’s parents, Petrolina Torres and Paulo Soares da Cruz can be heard speaking in Tetun throughout the podcast. We also talk to the author of a work-in-progress Tetun-English idiom dictionary, Anacleto Ribeiro, to learn why food is the perfect entrée into understanding Timor Leste, and an ideal model for thinking about development.

Recommended reading: Much of the material we had to fillet out of the podcast has been condensed into a piece for the Development Policy Centre blog. 

Memorandum of Understanding production team:

Visual credits: Photo courtesy of Agora Food Studio.

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].

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 Development Policy Centre. Dr Jenny Gordon, Chief Economist at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, assesses pathways to recovery post COVID-19 in Pacific Island economies. Dr Neelesh Gounder and Maholopa Laveil present their perspectives on Fiji and PNG, respectively.

Panellists:
Professor Stephen Howes, Director, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

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Dr Jenny Gordon, Chief Economist, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade

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Dr Neelesh Gounder, Senior Lecturer in Economics, University of the South Pacific

Maholopa Laveil, Lecturer in Economics, University of Papua New Guinea

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Chair:
Sadhana Sen, Regional Media Adviser, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

Photo credit: Gail Hampshire on Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

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].

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 paper, which estimates the demand for vocational workers in Australia by 2050 will exceed native supply by over two million. While there will be ample skilled labour available within Pacific Island countries, facilitating this movement in a managed way that maximises the development potential of migration will be key. To that end, Satish Chand discusses the second paper, which proposes the development of a ‘Pacific Skills Partnership’, a model that would facilitate skills creation across 14 low-income Pacific Island countries, with the greatest development potential lying in Papua New Guinea.

Speakers:

Michael Clemens is Director of Migration, Displacement, and Humanitarian Policy and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, where he studies the economic effects and causes of migration around the world. 

>> Related paper:  Skill Development and Regional Mobility: Lessons from the Australia-Pacific Technical College – Working Paper 370

Satish Chand is a Professor of Finance in the School of Business at the University of New South Wales and based at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. His research interests include labour migration, fragile states, and the challenges of development.

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>> Related paper: A Pacific Skills Partnership: Improving the APTC to Meet Skills Needed in the Region

Chair:
Dr Ryan Edwards, Deputy Director, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

Photo: Hohola Youth Development Centre, PNG (DFAT/Flickr CC BY 2.0)

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].

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 poor households: location is an asset, migration an investment.

Some of the most basic questions about remittances and their effects remain inadequately answered, in part because of a blinded research agenda. Asking better questions is a step towards better policies, programs and regulations and, above all, to enable people on low incomes to improve their lives.

In this webinar, based on the article “Migration and household finances: How a different framing can improve thinking about migration”, Timothy Ogden discusses some of the new and alternative research questions that emerge from the shift of perspective on remittances – from windfall to return on investment.

Speaker:
Timothy Ogden is Managing Director of the Financial Access Initiative, a research centre housed at New York University’s (NYU) Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service focused on how financial services can better meet the needs and improve the lives of low-income households.

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Chair:
Dr Ryan Edwards, Deputy Director, Development Policy Centre, The Australian National University

Photo credit: AU/UN Ist Photo/Stuart Price (Flickr CC0 1.0)

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].