October news: Timor-Leste Finance Minister to deliver inaugural Harold Mitchell development policy lecture | Careers in development | More

Timor-Leste and the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States

Emilia Pires, Minister of Finance, Timor-Leste
Harold Mitchell, AC, Chairman, Aegis Media, Australia and New Zealand
Hosted by Ian Young, ANU Vice Chancellor
Thursday 22 November @ 12.30pm (light lunch from 12pm)
Molonglo Theatre, Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

We are very pleased to announce the inaugural Harold Mitchell development policy lecture on Thursday November 22nd. This series of annual lectures has been created to provide a new forum in Australia at which the most pressing development issues can be addressed by the best minds and most influential practitioners of our time.

Emilia Pires has been Finance Minister of Timor-Leste since 2007, and is the founding chair of the g7+, a grouping of fragile states. The Minister will discuss the development prospects of Timor-Leste and the importance of the g7+ group and the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, which the g7+ has authored.

Harold Mitchell AC is founder of the Harold Mitchell Foundation and Chairman, Aegis Media, Australia and New Zealand. He will inaugurate the lecture series.

Don’t miss this important event. Register quickly here, as the lecture will reach full capacity fast.

Careers in development

The current generation of young Australians shows an unprecedented interest in international development. But how to get started? In this new Devpolicy discussion paper (and accompanying blog) Jonathan Pryke has tried to answer this question with advice on what a career in development actually is, what you can do to better your chances of getting started and where you can look.

PNG budget project survey about to commence

As part of our PNG budget project (Promoting Effective Public Expenditure) being conducted with PNG’s NRI, we are conducting a nationwide survey of some 400 schools and health centres. The survey teams were trained last week, and the survey itself commences this week and will run through till mid-November. The survey will update results first collected in 2002 as part of an NRI and World Bank project (reported here), and will fill critical data gaps about the progress (or lack of it) made over the last decade in the delivery of government services, during which the resources boom has tripled PNG government revenue, and a number of important expenditure reforms have been undertaken.

We also welcome Grant Walton as the latest addition to the ANU PNG Budget Project team. Grant is working on the survey. He recently finished his PhD at the University of Melbourne, which compared policy maker and citizens’ perspectives on corruption in PNG.

New events page

Over the past two years we have hosted a total of 41 public events (a combination of lectures, discussions and forums). Most of these events have been filmed, and many have related blogs and articles written about them. To give you better access to these great resources we have brought them together and cataloged them on our new events page. Videos of our last two events – Owen Barder on the role of development think tanks and Steven Rood and Mr Jaime Faustino on the political economy of reforms in the Philippines – will be available shortly. Our engaging business in development forum is on this Wednesday (October 17).

Blog posts

Here is a list of Devpolicy blog posts (organised thematically) since our last newsletter, a month ago. Keep an eye out for more posts coming in the 2012 Pacific Update series.

Blog Digest

September blog digest: Economists v. aid | Have NGOs lost their way? | Solomons, success and donors | Problems at Porgera | More by Stephen Howes.

Aid

NGO dependency not the real issue: a response to Joanne Spratt by Patrick Kilby.

To strive or to serve: how should NGOs promote sustainable development? By Terence Wood.

Note: AusAID Discussion Paper on Impact Evaluation by Robert Cannon.

Should we give aid to countries with questionable human rights records? By Dinuk Jayasuriya.

Lord Ashcroft’s taps by Terence Wood.

Development

How do I get started in a career in development? By Jonathan Pryke.

‘The State of Education’ 2012 Indonesia Update by Colum Graham.

The progressive education fallacy in developing countries, by Gerard Guthrie: a review by Robert Cannon.

Note: Sachs weighs in on ‘Why Nations Fail’ by Jonathan Pryke.

Pacific

Vanuatu resurgent by Odo Tevi.

Palm tree justice: inside the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands by Tess Newton Cain.

Managing the political economy of development in Solomon Islands by Rick Hou.

Pursuing development in the Pacific: acting on what we know by Biman Chand Prasad.

Swept under the pandanus mat: the Review of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat needs to be taken seriously by Matthew Dornan.

Solomon Islands economic update by Rick Hou.

PNG

We want what the Ok Tedi women have! By Nicholas Menzies and Georgia Harley.

Social challenges in PNG by Serena Sasingian.

Benchmarking the performance of state owned enterprises in PNG by Laure Darcy.

Deterioration of public administration in Papua New Guinea – views of eminent public servants by Terence Wood.

Buzzes

Development Buzz (Oct 10): Donor transparency on the rise | Summits in NY | Child mortality at 2015 | More by Jonathan Pryke and Sophie Roden.

Education Buzz (Oct 5): Education First v GPE? | The failure of capacity building in education aid | More by Robert Cannon and Colum Graham.

Pacific Buzz (Oct 3): Pacific leaders at UN General Assembly | Setback for Fiji rehabilitation | PNG ready to raise West Papua issue… and more by Devpolicy-PiPP.

Aid Buzz (Sep 26): AusAID’s PNG HIV response criticized | Regional processing and aid | Afghan aid submissions | UNSC bid and aid | More by Jonathan Pryke.

Aid and Asia Buzz (Sep 21): Intra-Korea aid tangles | India’s new aid body | Afghanistan analysis | EU & ASEAN | Burma update by Ashlee Betteridge.

Pacific Buzz (Sep 19): PNG update | Clinton wraps up Asia Pacific tour | Fiji update… and more by Devpolicy-PiPP.

 

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