Devpolicy news: Stakeholder survey last chance | Aid in 2013 elections | PNG’s lost decade? - Devpolicy Blog from the Development Policy Centre

Stakeholder survey closes Sunday

This is your last chance to complete the Australian aid stakeholder survey, our effort (as explained here) to obtain feedback on the effectiveness of the Australian aid program, and suggestions for its improvement. Whether you are involved in the aid program or simply interested in it, whether you live in Australia or overseas, and whether you are on the giving or the receiving end of the aid relationship, we are interested in hearing from you. The survey will close at the end of the weekend. Preliminary results will be released towards the end of the year.

We have had more than 300 responses to the survey so far. If you haven’t participated yet, you can fill out the survey here. It only takes about 15 minutes. Don’t miss out on your chance to take part in this important exercise.

Aid in the 2013 elections

Aid hasn’t really featured in the elections, though at least the ABC did include an aid question in their Vote Compass survey exercise – showing, so far, that Queensland opposes aid.

But if you’re reading this newsletter, you might be interested in the parties’ aid and development policy. Robin Davies has conducted an exhaustive analysis here (summarised in this blog). He discerns six main differences between the two main parties, in relation to: aid volumes, geography, private sector development, climate change, multilateral aid, and asylum seekers. Whichever party comes to power will face major challenges, Robin argues, to restore funding predictability, limit the damage done by linking aid to asylum seekers, and improve program quality.

Here in Canberra, together with Oxfam, Make Poverty History and Oaktree, we hosted an election forum on aid, and drew a capacity crowd of almost 200. You can listen to the podcast of the forum here.

PNG’s lost decade? The next PNG budget forum
Thursday 19 September
Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Our next budget forum jointly organised with PNG’s National Research Institute (NRI) will be held on Thursday, 19 September at NRI. We’ll be comparing findings from our 2012 survey of more than 200 schools and 150 health facilities from across PNG with a similar survey from 2002 to judge to what extent PNG has been able to translate its massive resources boom into better services for ordinary people. Our team will be spending the start of September visiting the provinces where the PEPE survey took place to discuss the preliminary results with provincial officials. For more information contact Colin Wiltshire or Andrew Mako.

Australian aid evaluations forum

In light of the impending federal election and the transition of government into caretaker mode this forum has been cancelled.

NZ aid beyond 2015
Wednesday 4 September
Wellington, New Zealand

The New Zealand Aid and Development Dialogues (NZADDs) is running a half-day forum at the Victoria University of Wellington on 4 September on aid’s role amid the shifting context of global development, and how New Zealand’s aid and development efforts can best respond. Devpolicy Director Stephen Howes will be speaking on the topic: ‘The future of aid: does it have one, and if so, what does it look like?’ Click here for more information.

How do we plan, campaign and work in development? The reality of doing development in complex systems
Duncan Green
Thursday 12 September @6pm
Molonglo Theatre, Level 2, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

Aid professionals know that real life has a way of ignoring our plans and procedures, but often we block out that knowledge in order to keep functioning. In this talk Duncan Green will discuss what we can do differently in development if we acknowledge and try to adapt to the messiness of reality.

Tapping the Market: Opportunities for domestic investments in water and sanitation for the poor
Jaehyang So and Bob Warner
Friday 13 September @ 12.30pm
Lennox Room Level 1, JG Crawford Building 132, Lennox Crossing, ANU

In this public event, Ms Jaehyang So, Manager of the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WESP) and Bob Warner, Director, Pacific Research Partnerships at Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU, will present the findings of the WSP’s recently published report ‘Tapping the Market: Opportunities for domestic investments in water and sanitation for the poor. ’

2014 Australasian Aid and International Development Policy Workshop
February 13-14, 2014
Australian National University

In February 2014 the Development Policy Centre, together with the Asia Foundation, will be hosting the first Australasian Aid and International Development Policy Workshop. The convenors of this multidisciplinary workshop welcome papers on a range of topics relating to aid effectiveness, the political economy of aid, aid from non-traditional donors, international public goods, the international development architecture, international climate change policy, and migration and trade.

Abstracts should be submitted to devpolicy@anu.edu.au. Submissions are welcome from academics, students and practitioners. For more information, click here.

Past events

Here is a list of the events we have hosted in the past few weeks. Be sure to follow the links for more information on the events and to access podcasts and presentation slides. And don’t forget to sign up to our podcast series, which now has more than 40 episodes chronicling all of the events and interviews run by Devpolicy since November last year.

Goals for people: A review of post-2015 proposals, and some suggestions
Robin Davies

Child protection in Afghanistan
Kerry Boland

Election forum on Australian aid
Helen Szoke, Stephen Howes, Andrew Leigh, Elizabeth Lee and Julie Melrose

Blog summary

You can find a summary of all posts since our last newsletter on August 16 in the list below.

Analysis

Australian aid

The other scale-up: Australian public donations for development over the last decade by Sophie Roden, Michael Wulfsohn and Stephen Howes.

Separated at birth? How to tell Labor and the Coalition apart on aid and development by Robin Davies.

The AusAID-Carnival agreement: a backward step by Stephen Howes.

AusAID support for Indonesian universities by David Guy.

What is Value for Money in aid programs? By Dinuk Jayasuriya.