 Excuse me. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, everyone in this room, everyone in the Western Theatre and other overflow theatres, everyone who is watching this event on live streaming all around the room, welcome to the 2019 Australasian Aid Conference. We acknowledge and celebrate the first Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and we pay our respects to their elders past, present and emerging. My name is Stephen Howes, I'm the Director of the Development Policy Centre and it's my delight to welcome you to this, our sixth Australasian Aid Conference. It's a lot of work, but I hope you'll get a lot out of it. I'd like to thank our conference team in advance for their hard work and dedication. The people often ask me about the theme of these conferences are, there is no theme. This is bottom-up development. We do try to curate a number of interesting keynotes every year and we make sure we have a strong regional focus. But apart from that, the themes depend on the submissions, they depend on you, which is the way it should be. This conference is one of the three we actually host every year and I just want to remind you about the PNG update in Port Moresby on the 13th and 14th of June and the Pacific update in Suva on the 3rd and 4th of July. Course of papers for both these conferences are now live and I hope to see many of you there. There are many particularly strong aspects of the conference this year. One is the wide range of subjects covered in both aid and international development. We do call it the AAC for short, but the conference is meant to be as much about international development as it is about aid. Second is the number of new participants and topics. I'm glad that we are reaching out to new audiences and building new partnerships. I'd particularly like to acknowledge Professor Hee Jin Lee, President of the Korean Association for International Development and Cooperation, with whom we have a growing partnership. And you can see a number of sessions featuring Korean academics in the program. I'm also very excited by our keynotes this year. I'm very grateful to Donald Kabarooka for traveling halfway around the world to be with us. You might be wondering why we have a senior policymaker from Africa joining us for an Australasian conference, but I think the answer is obvious. It's a part of the world we just don't know enough about and as you'll soon find out Donald is a fascinating speaker. I'd also like to thank Francis Adamson, the Secretary of DFAT for agreeing to speak. With our conference we have a three-year cycle for opening addresses, featuring the Minister of Foreign Affairs, then the Shadow Minister, and then the Secretary. And with Francis' talk today, we'll be completing that cycle for a second time. Since its inception, this conference has been a collaborative product of our Centre with the Asia Foundation. And I think this year the Asia Foundation is contributing more than ever to the conference. I'd like to now call on the President of the Asia Foundation, David Arnold, to deliver his opening remarks. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. On behalf of the Asia Foundation, I'm delighted to join in welcoming all of you to the Sixth Australasian Aid Conference, which the Asia Foundation is honoured to be co-convening again with our friends at the Development Policy Centre. We're starting 2019 with many new challenges and changes in the international donor landscape. The most obvious, where we're gathered, is the change in the Australian government leadership, including in ministerial responsibility for the development portfolio. In the U.S., where the Asia Foundation has its headquarters, Congress recently passed the BUILD Act, and the administration has announced the establishment of the International Development Finance Corporation, USIDFC, with a budget of $60 billion. China has recently launched the International Development Cooperation Agency, and this year we're celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, which, in 1978, provided the initial roadmap for South-South cooperation. I'm sure that all of these events will feature in the discussions that will be taking place over the next couple days, and will certainly be impacting development policy in the year ahead. After six years of collaborating with ANU on this conference, I suspect that many of you are now familiar with the Asia Foundation. Each year we draw on our network of 18 country offices across Asia, and the work that we do on some of the critical development issues and challenges facing the region to contribute Asian expertise and voices to the conference. Yesterday, some of you may have had the opportunity to attend the launch of our study on ASEAN as the Architect for Regional Development Cooperation. This afternoon, the Foundation has panels on peace and conflict in Southeast Asia that will be held at 1.30. These are advanced plugs for these sessions. Please note them on your schedule. We have a panel on Chinese Development Cooperation that will be taking place at 3.30, and tomorrow morning, if you get up very early, you can attend our 8 a.m. session on technology and development. As I think all of us know, some of the most important discussions and conversations of these events often takes place outside of the formal sessions. In our experience, this conference has provided invaluable opportunities for networking and for informal discussion. My colleagues and I have always left the conference with a whole host of new contacts and collaborative opportunities. We believe that the Australasian Aid Conference is one of the premier international conferences on development policy and practice, and together with ANU, we promote it actively to our colleagues across Asia. Clearly, word is getting out. This year we are, I'm told, bursting at the seams. Stephen informed me that we have nearly or more than 600 registered participants this year, and I suspect there's going to be a need to move to a new venue if this keeps growing. I referred to this as a high class problem. Everybody should have this kind of problem in terms of the success of their efforts. But I think the quality of the panels and the site events also is testament to the growing recognition that this annual gathering has engendered across the development, international development community. Credit goes to an outstanding coordination team, especially thanks to Stephen Howes and our colleague, Anthea Mulakala, who has been his partner from the Asia Foundation, as well as the extraordinary support team of Ashley, Sachane, and Madeleine. I hope that all of you will take full advantage of the knowledge, debates, and networks that the conference offers. I, for one, am really looking forward to the discussions. And again, congratulations to our ANU hosts, the conference organizers, and a warm welcome to all of you. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. So my name is Ashley Betteridge, and I'm the Center Manager at the Development Policy Center. And I'd like to join my colleagues from, as part of the organizing committee, and warmly welcoming everyone to this year's conference. After many, many months of planning, it's wonderful and exciting to finally see everyone here in person. And I know that you'll enjoy the huge range of panels we have on over the next two days. As mentioned, this is the largest conference ever, which I seem to say every single year somehow. And because of that, I just have a few housekeeping and logistics items that I need to run through quickly so that we can all enjoy the amazing program. With so many people in the building, we do need some ground rules. So, sorry about that. Yeah, I'll deal with that later. So for those of you on shared registrations, we ask you to respect your fellow attendees by following the rules for those passes with one person per shared registration to be present at the conference at any one time. As everyone probably knows by now, it's first and best dressed for the plenaries here in Molongo. So congratulations to those of you in the room. Thanks for coming early. So if you want to get a seat in this room, do come and arrive early for the main sessions. But they are also being live streamed into Western Acton and on the web around the world. So because of that, if you are speaking in this room, or asking a question or participating in a discussion, you do need to use a microphone, otherwise people downstairs or overseas or wherever they're watching can't hear you. On the dinner this evening, it sold out in December last year, again, another venue size issue. So that does mean that you do need to be registered to attend. And if you can't remember if you have a dinner as part of your registration, our team downstairs on the registration desk can help you on that. Throughout the conference, we'll have morning and afternoon tea, lunch and refreshments of downstairs in the Barton lobby outside the theater downstairs. If you've liked any special dietary requirements, our caterers are aware of those. So please do just identify yourselves to them. Again, on crowd control, it can become quite clogged in that area. So do we encourage you to select your food and then perhaps find a nice space to sit and enjoy it rather than stopping the movement of people through the catering tables, because we don't want anyone to get hangry down there. So do keep things moving. Unfortunately, the cafe in this building has closed down suddenly. So we've set up a separate conference cafe space with tea and coffee and some group tables, room formal meetings and work in the Canberra Springbank rooms. There's many reasons to head down there. We've also got a wonderful photo exhibition from the Umi Sunup Strong project, and it's showcasing the work of human rights defenders in PNG. And we've also got some research posters. So do head down there and grab a coffee and check out those exhibits. Because the conference is so big, with so many concurrent sessions and busy, busy days, keeping on time is very important. So here's the annual timekeeping speech. Each of our sessions has an event assistant or volunteer who is there to help our chairs run the room. And they have signs that they can use to help keep people to time. So do coordinate with our assistant. And we ask chairs to help us in this task of keeping the days on track. And we also ask speakers to be mindful of keeping to their time, so that everyone gets a fair go. For the phone junkies, we have a conference app this year through Hooper. So do download it as there's heaps of great networking tools. And you can build your own program. And there's details about that on the back of your lanyards. And there's already some buzz on the conference hashtag on Twitter. We were already trending yesterday on day zero of the two day conference. So if you're interested in that, the hashtag is AIC 2019. I'd also like to invite everyone to engage with our wonderful sponsors in the FOIA just outside this theater. Their support helps us to keep this conference growing. And we're very, very grateful for it. This year, we have the Australian Center for International Agricultural Research, the Australian Volunteers Program, Cardno, DFAT, FHI 360, Kotelpa International Child Fund, Direct Impact Group, and the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures. So do pop out, habitat them and hear about their work. We also hope we'll see you tomorrow evening at the closing reception for the conference at 5pm in the courtyard. I will definitely be there. And if you have any questions, our friendly team at the registration desk will do our best to help. We'd also love if you could complete our feedback survey. Again, the details are on the back of your lanyard. So all that's left to say now is enjoy the conference and welcome to AIC 2019. We're thrilled to have you here. Thank you. So now please join me in warmly welcoming the Provost of the Australian National University, Professor Mike Calford. He'll be chairing the opening address. Good morning. Thank you, Ashley, Stephen and David. And let me add my welcome to visitors to ANU. I understand that more than a hundred of you, including perhaps some watching downstairs, are visitors to Australia. Some of you as our warning speaker for the first time. So do take advantage of a beautiful time of year in Canberra. First semester starts next week, which means that it's orientation week for our new students. We have 4,000 new students yesterday. We had a big line up and welcome for them. They'll be wandering all around the place, making it a vital and exciting environment. So please enjoy that. And those of you that miss out on the dinner tickets, do wander to the other side of campus. There's plenty of places where you can find a good spot to eat and have a drink this evening. So congratulations on being bigger than ever before. And I understand that's happened every year and no doubt you will have to take sight for a new venue next year. But in the meantime, you're being hosted here at the Crawford School, which is most appropriate because it is our leading area for global engagement and regional development. Most appropriate. Thank you, Helen, as the head of the school. Our National University has special, being the National University has special responsibilities and running events such as this fits firmly within those special responsibilities. Now, we're welcome. Unfortunate to have Frances Adamson with us here today to open the conference and to provide us with her vision for Australia's engagement on developing issues in our region and globally. Frances has led the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade as Secretary since 2016 and made history as the first woman to take the helm of that important portfolio. Frances brings with her strong and diverse experience as international advisor to the Prime Minister, Australian Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, and Chief of Staff to both the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Defence. She has also twice served in the Australian High Commission in London. She's also President of the Institute of Public Administration Australia, the ACT division, a member of the Advisory Board of the National Security College, hosted here at ANU, the Epic Board and the Asia Society Australia Advisory Council. She's also a special advisor to the male champions of change and a member of the Chief Executive Women. Please join me in welcoming Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ms Frances Adamson. Thank you very much for that kind introduction, Mike, and let me too begin by acknowledging the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Nanimo people, and pay my respects to their elders past and present. Let me also acknowledge Dr Donald Kabaruka, former President African Development Bank and former Rwandan Minister of Finance. Masood Ahmad, President of the Centre for Global Development. David Arnold, President of the Asia Foundation. Professor Helen Sullivan, Director Crawford School of Public Policy. Professor Stephen Howes, Director Development Policy Centre. Let me also acknowledge Ashley Betteridge and her clearly very hardworking colleagues, colleagues, members of the Diplomatic Corps. Let me also acknowledge Dr Sharman Stone, Australia's Ambassador for Women and Girls and a colleague of mine. Ladies and gentlemen, I was genuinely delighted when Stephen invited me to speak at this increasingly important conference. I had, of course, noticed that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Shadow Minister had spoken in previous years. I hadn't realised you were on quite the cycle that you are on. I'm very pleased that it's my turn this year. The Development Policy Centre and the Asia Foundation, of course, continue to do an outstanding job bringing together researchers and a wide range of stakeholders from across Australia, the Pacific, Asia and beyond. We're all talking about the number of participants. Let me sort of acknowledge you, whether you're listening in, whether you're watching, whether you're going to be reading on transcript later. I mean, it's striking in a way that this conference goes from strength to strength. And in other respects, perhaps it's completely unsurprising. I'm glad, though, that I've got a number of colleagues, DFAC colleagues, who will be here throughout and will be able to give me a sense at the end of it all of how your conversations have gone, what themes you're tackling and what ideas you have for the way ahead. Your insights, collaboration and research do make a vital contribution to aid and international development policy in our region. The task of driving forward our understanding of development issues and responses is as important as it is complex and it cannot be done, of course, in isolation. Halfway through my term as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, I'd like to set out the 2019 context for Australia's development partnerships, what we're trying to achieve and the way we're going about it. I look forward to the discussion that we'll have shortly. But let me first set out a framework for my remarks. I'll speak about some of the major contemporary challenges to development in our region and at home. Then I'd like to take a step back and consider the purpose of the development cooperation program, something that I think is especially important in such fast changing times. With that as the frame, I'll share with you the areas on which I've been most focused and I'll finish with some future directions. Let me turn first to the challenges. The context for Australia's development cooperation and indeed all our international relations is one of multifaceted change. Our world is being reshaped by technological change, climate change, globalisation and its discontents and geopolitical transition. These compounding challenges profoundly affect development policy and programmes. In Australia, we know we need to work harder to earn our place as a preferred development partner for the region and we need to think hard about how we can do that over the long term. We do so in the face of questions about our spending overseas as Australians battle flood, drought and fire at home. Australians are also keenly aware of the changing balance of power in our region. Today, some of our region's largest economies are developing countries. Naturally then, development policy is more meshed in foreign policy than was perhaps once the case. At Leader's speeches at APEC in Port Moresby last November laid open, the big strategic questions of our age have landed on our doorstep with a new intensity. We have our work cut out for us right now, close to home and globally, to hold our own in an increasingly contested international arena. And of course, we actually want to do more than simply hold our own. The government's 2017 foreign policy white paper explained both why and how Australia should maximise our international influence, including by making our development cooperation as effective as we can. Australians are right to expect from us a development cooperation program that makes the best possible use of their taxes and responds adroitly to a fast changing world. They are right to expect a development cooperation program animated and organised by Australia's national interests. We deliver this by focusing our efforts on our own region, the Indo-Pacific and in particular Pacific Island countries where we have most at stake and can bring the most influence to bear. We do it by thinking carefully about the main game, achieving strategic clarity and acting accordingly. I think we can all agree on the need as a community to work more closely with our regional partners to design programmes together that deliver strong results, to hold ourselves to account for the results and where our results are suboptimal and sometimes they are to correct course quickly. It is important then that we are clear about the purpose of Australia's development cooperation. It has a unique part to play in our national interests within a wider agenda. Australia's development cooperation makes our region more secure and stable and that makes Australia more secure and stable. Australian development cooperation boosts our region's prosperity and that benefits Australia's economy and prospects. When the scale and pace of change is so great, it is right that our programme should change and it has but throughout its purpose has remained steady. We remain firmly focused on ending poverty in our region. Ending poverty is the starting point for the international community's 2030 agenda and it is at the heart of Australia's development programme but our interests will not be well met by a region in which people have escaped poverty but only just or only temporarily. It is strongly in Australia's interest that the people of our region are able to realise the benefits of economic freedom and economic opportunity. We want individuals and communities to live well and raise children with hope in a world of moderate policies, moderate politics and economic freedom. Australian development cooperation works to that end in a region where the needs remain immensely high where we are still relatively very well off, where we care about our neighbours and recognise that in many ways our well-being is bound up with theirs. Strikingly and happily, the proportion of people in East Asia and the Pacific living in extreme poverty has fallen from 60% to 4% over the past 30 years. This is a monumental achievement but there remain pockets of extreme poverty in some countries, high rates of poverty in several and considerable state fragility. Of the 15 countries that we partner with on development, 10 are fragile or conflict affected. PNG, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Afghanistan are all still burdened with high rates of extreme poverty and across the Indo-Pacific there are hundreds of millions of people whose economic situation remains precarious. In Indonesia, for example, almost 60% of the population lives on less than $6 a day. Many countries in our region and particularly in the Pacific are acutely vulnerable to economic and other shocks. In 2018, Cyclone Gita was estimated to have caused damage to Tonga's economy equivalent to 30% of its GDP. In the face of these needs, Australian Development Cooperation Partnerships deliver resilience, growth and opportunity. We support effective economic management and enabling environment for business to grow, strong private sectors, open markets and trade. We understand that gender inequality contributes to and often exacerbates a range of challenges including poverty, weak governance and conflict and violent extremism. We empower women and girls. We support countries to get the most out of the resources they spend on health and education. We implement inclusive development programs, partnering with people with disability and indigenous peoples. To help countries protect and advance their development gains, we invest in strong security partnerships. This takes us into many complex policy areas, but throughout, reducing poverty and providing new opportunities remains at the heart of what we do. Now, for many in this room, the rationale for this is self-evident. It accords with Australia's values and builds the kind of region we want, prosperous and stable. But it's worth looking twice at the question of our national interest, especially given the strategic shifts underway in our region and neighbourhood. I strongly believe that Australia's national interest is best served through a well-resourced and effective, highly professional development assistance program that delivers on our long-term interests in our partner's prosperity. Our development program is a rolling investment in the kind of region we want. It's important that development professionals play a leading role in what we might call deep policy formulation alongside country experts, security specialists, economists and others. The reason is simple. Reducing poverty helps create the region we want in the ways I've already mentioned and it is a proven basis for exceptionally effective relations with partner countries. Solomon Islands is in much better shape thanks to the success of Ramsey and so is our bilateral relationship. So much so that former Solomon Islands Prime Minister now Deputy Prime Minister Sogavare wants a staunch nationalist critic of the mission, himself warmly welcomed an agreement with Australia to facilitate a comparable intervention should it ever be needed and of course we hope it won't be. Or consider our trade negotiations with Indonesia which we completed in August last year. The economic cooperation chapter of the Indonesia Australia closer economic partnership agreement shows that we can use development cooperation to help a close partner like Indonesia realise the full benefits of a trade agreement. Mutual interests are the main business of foreign and trade policy. Development cooperation can be at its most effective when it unlocks mutual interests and harnesses self-interest on both sides. Indeed that is the natural end state of development cooperation but along the way development cooperation has its own particular strengths by virtue of its focus on one party's development needs. The major achievements I've mentioned and many others demonstrate that Australian development cooperation focused on the well-being of Solomon Islanders and Indonesians worked profoundly in Australia's national interest. When development partners invite us to make a contribution to their internal development challenges they do so on the basis of one fundamental premise. The focus has always been and absolutely remains that country's development through poverty reduction, prosperity and stability. That's a privilege we must continue to earn. That's how we build the development partnerships that yield opportunity, security and strengths. That's what we are appropriated four billion dollars a year through the budget process to do. Obviously this is a huge responsibility, financial and policy-wise so strong governance and performance systems are vital. We are continually seeking ways to improve. The machinery of government changes that brought Australia's development budget across to DFAT in 2014 were big and complex. They changed the institutional setting for governance of our development cooperation and they changed the program's staffing profile. In late 2016, shortly after I'd started, I commissioned a review of the development program that assessed and redirected DFAT's implementation of its new responsibilities. We have built a strong foundation for what remains of course a work in progress. The first priority I will highlight this morning is governance of the development program. As many of you know, DFAT established the Aid Governance Board in late 2017 combining and building on the former Aid Investment Committee and Development Policy Committee. The Aid Governance Board reassigned responsibilities to better align policy and implementation, manage risk effectively and improve effectiveness and efficiency including through improved development capability. The board is making a significant contribution and I see Claire Walsh, its chair is sitting in the front row over there and I expect its impact to grow over the next couple of years. I know everyone here today shares the strongest commitment to aid effectiveness. Australia's approach to aid effectiveness focuses on ensuring the following. Close partnerships with partner governments. Strong analysis of country needs through aid investment plans. Thorough design of individual aid investments. Careful selection of implementing partners and regular monitoring and evaluation of the performance of individual aid investments and implementing partners. Strong safeguarding practices and culture within DFAT and our partners is an imperative. We'll be releasing a new policy on preventing sexual exploitation and harassment in the near future, which will clearly outline our expectations. All this is built into the programming cycle and is core work for all my colleagues who work on our aid program, as it is for me. Across all DFAT's operations I have continued to emphasise the importance of a strong performance culture and systems and of collecting evidence to build our knowledge of what works well and why. In some respects our Development Cooperation Programme leads the way for the rest of the department. Each year DFAT completes over 350 reviews of individual aid assessments and we assess progress with the implementation of 25 country and regional programs. These annual processes ensure our managers critically assess the program's performance and take action to achieve better results and build on success. The Office of Development Effectiveness within DFAT produces robust evaluations which contribute not only to the effectiveness of the Australian aid program but to global knowledge on a range of important development issues. As an example I was pleased to launch our evaluation on disability inclusion in the aid program in November last year and I'm looking forward to the ODE's evaluation on ending violence against women and girls being launched in the near future. The department maintains a consistently strong track record of producing and publishing evaluations with management responses across the breadth of the aid program. Transparency is vital if at times painful. In 2018 the department published 45 evaluations a publication rate of 94% and an increase on the 41 publications of 2017. Development is a difficult and high-risk endeavour. We work in complex environments where institutions may be weak and our counterparts may have limited exposure to best practice. The reality is that investments and programs will not always go to plan. DFAT's report, the performance of Australian aid, is candid and transparent about areas where we must do better. When we identify problems we work with our partners to improve the situation. This is an essential part of building trusting long-term relations with our international partners and of getting our development partnerships right. A second priority is related to the first and that is the importance of expertise. This is obvious and has been a consistent refrain during my term. I am pleased to see an improvement reflected in the ANU's aid stakeholder survey though there is clearly more to be done. I want to reassure all of you that we are continuing to work to ensure DFAT has the expertise needed to deliver the aid program efficiently and effectively. We have a dedicated work force strategy for international development and a stream of work to identify ways to build further on our existing capability. This work is essential because expertise is the key to coherence. It is key to understanding the many trajectories of change that impact development work today. We need development professionals who can try new approaches to long-standing challenges without fragmenting the aid program. Development professionals who are valued as highly in DFAT as our trade, foreign policy and corporate professionals and who are confident about their long term career paths. And indeed we need DFAT officers fluent in these streams and their integration. We need experts both within DFAT and among our partners who can build the long term partnerships for poverty reduction while also maximising the benefits for Australia's integrated international agenda along the way. Ensuring we can continue to recruit, develop and maintain this work force is a key priority for me. Within DFAT I want to draw particular attention to our locally engaged staff who do so much to advance our development objectives across the Indo-Pacific. They bring invaluable local knowledge and contacts and are a crucial part of our post corporate memory and contribute mightily to our effectiveness. Locally engaged staff have been a particular focus of my own and other senior DFAT colleagues efforts to recognise and reward expertise. I'm very aware of course in this room that the government has no monopoly on expertise. The government looks to all of you to work with us and to challenge us. One notable critique was delivered yesterday by Richard Moore looking ahead five years after DFAT was aid integration. I agree with Richard that perspectives from development cooperation can help us think differently and better about wider transformations in our world and international relations in particular. I welcome Richard's focus on expertise, a major priority for me as I've mentioned. I must take issue however with a distinction Richard draws between diplomacy which he casts as largely short term and development cooperation which requires long term thinking and programming. I can assure you after decades in the service that foreign policy is not a short term game. The drivers of our foreign policy are complex, varied and emphatically long term. We are circumspect about our ability to predict decades into the future but we work constantly to prepare Australia for an international landscape we can and must glimpse but cannot know. That is why our foreign policy white paper which looks 10 years out remains such an important document. Another of my priorities is structured analytical forward thinking and I've established a new team in DFAT specialising in this work. Certainly we can do better at fusing the long term perspectives that inform development, economic and other aspects of our foreign policy. No one ever said integration was easy or complete. Richard's work will provide an important stimulus for our ongoing effort. So please, as a development community, keep telling us what you think, though I'm sure you need no encouragement. I turn now to the aid program's future directions and to our neighbourhood. Already this year the Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs have visited several Pacific Island countries, many visits of course by the Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific demonstrating that in order to step up in the Pacific the government will continue to show up at the highest levels. The pillars of the step up are economic, security and community links. A major reform is the creation of the new Australian infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific. This $2 billion infrastructure initiative will significantly boost Australia's support for international infrastructure development in Pacific countries and Timor-Leste. It will use grant funding combined with long-term loans to invest in essential infrastructure such as telecommunications, energy, transport and water. This will assist Pacific countries to contribute to global and regional trade and build their economic resilience. We will seek to avoid unsustainable debt burdens. We will ensure that appropriate social, environmental and work health and safety standards apply to all projects funded by the facility. Another central economic measure is the very significant expansion in labour mobility. The new Pacific Labor Scheme facilitates accessible Pacific workers beyond seasonal work to now include low and semi-skilled work in new sectors such as aged and disability care, tourism, hospitality and non-seasonal agriculture. To help overcome the costs of Ireland's remoteness, we will grant visas of up to three years. The scheme is uncapped and will grow with Australian employer demand. We know from our experience of the long-running seasonal worker program that savings and remittances, an average of $8,850 per six month work placement, have a real economic impact. The Pacific Labor Scheme is much broader, so it introduces new opportunities and new complexity. Research partnerships have helped government to conceptualise and build our Pacific Labor mobility initiatives. I want to acknowledge that. They will remain important as we maximise the economic and social benefits. In the security space, the Pacific Fusion Centre and the Australia Pacific Security College will help deliver on Pacific leaders' commitments in the boy declaration. The Fusion Centre will bring together the best security insights in the region, enabling a big picture view on the challenges we face together. This includes traditional security challenges like transnational crime and maritime domain awareness. But it goes much further than that, into the domains of cyber security, health challenges, humanitarian preparedness and response and environmental security, including climate change, a huge issue for our partners. The Australian Pacific Security College will bring together officials from Pacific countries for training and professional development opportunities. The college will deliver training across the Pacific, utilising existing facilities and responding to countries' needs. No less important is the suite of programs designed to bring Australian and Pacific Islanders together through education, religion, sport and culture. Throughout, we will integrate our overarching interest in making Australian strengths more available in the Pacific with our development cooperation focus on reducing poverty and promoting opportunity. A second future direction for Australian development cooperation is on partnerships to respond to climate change. Australia and Pacific Island countries have formally stated in the boy declaration that climate change remains the single greatest threat to the well-being of the peoples of the Pacific. We are already mainstreaming climate and disaster resilience into our aid investments, especially in the Pacific. But we need to do more to support our neighbours and partners to reach sustainable development goals. Our thanks-take holders, many of whom are here today for their contribution to this work. Thirdly, on future directions, in Southeast Asia, we will work with development partners to build stability, prosperity and resilience. Our partners in Southeast Asia are embarked on complex economic, social and structural reforms to consolidate their gains in recent decades and sustain further economic growth. Our development cooperation facilitates influential relationships and expert partnerships that have proved pivotal in reform to date and will continue to do so. As many of you know, Overseas Development Assistance comprises a small and declining proportion of the overall sources of development finance for these countries. Accordingly, we will complete a shift from service delivery to focus on economic governance and policy reform to develop the skills and human capital that Southeast Asian countries want. In Southeast Asia, as in the Pacific, our long-standing education programmes are high priorities. Our work in the health sector is complemented by the path-breaking work of the Indo-Pacific Centre for Health Security. We help to mitigate the effects of conflict and build peace, especially in Myanmar and the Philippines. Our development relationships in Southeast Asia are points of influence in the trajectory of change in these countries. We occupy these positions by virtue of the quality and integrity of our development cooperation, a major national asset. The final direction I wish to highlight is the deepening integration of development cooperation as a core part of our joined-up foreign policy. This is not just about the incorporation of development into DFAT. A bigger driver is the region we want to emerge with us as partners. The era of donor-recipient relations is passing away, as it was always meant to. Development assistance no longer defines our relations with any other country. DFAT's new holistic country strategies capture that. As did Prime Minister Morrison, in the way he talked about Avruvale or family relations in the Pacific. The entire Pacific step-up is a demonstration of how development cooperation programs can set the scene and set a tone and support a wider international agenda. As development cooperation helps us ensure that our Indo-Pacific region evolves peacefully, trades freely and cooperates to build security. Let me conclude by observing that international development cooperation is both a challenging and rewarding endeavour. You all know that. Of the many who contribute, I want to acknowledge particularly the volunteers. For more than 60 years, successive Australian governments have supported Australian volunteers in almost 50 countries. The Australian Volunteers Programme takes a more structured approach to long-term capacity building to build lasting connections between Australians and their overseas partners. Copies of the new global program strategy for the Australian Volunteers Programme are available in the FOIA. I commend the strategy to you. We are all highly motivated by the opportunity and obligation to reduce poverty and build opportunity as effectively as we can. And I think we all understand to get the long-term settings right and to build Australia's development cooperation program over time we have to forge a practical consensus on Australia's national interests in development in the Indo-Pacific. I thank you all for your contribution and look forward to even more productive collaboration as we work to strengthen our partnerships in our own region and beyond to the benefit of all those in greatest need. Thank you. Thank you, Francis. We'll have questions in a few moments and do call for the microphones for questions. Australia can be proud of DFAT's actions and leadership. Clearly, we are served by a dedicated and informed staff at DFAT. Thank you for your leadership. I heard you say that Australia wants to do more than hold our own that our focus is on the Indo-Pacific but we mustn't lose sight of the main game. You said ending poverty in our region by promoting economic freedom is the main game. And importantly, you've got avenues for closing the loop and holding ourselves to account through regular evaluations. I think we see a very mature system that's been presented today. But you're ultimately dependent upon the talented and engaged workforce, both local, global, and as you finish with your volunteer workforce. Thank you so much. We'll have another round of applause while people get their questions. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the very interesting presentation. I'm Clay from APNIC, the Regional Internet Registry, and I was hoping to ask about your cyber capacity building program. I know it's probably a relatively newer and smaller part of DFAT's development work. But with the expansion of the budget so quickly since the strategy launched just a couple of years ago, it's obviously of growing importance. I was wondering what your perspective was on how cyber capacity building fits into the current portfolio of DFAT's development, but also into the future. How would it fit in? OK, Clay, thanks very much for that question. And I mean, it's true that our cyber capability has been building. I mean, it's obvious from the area within the department that works most closely on this. And it's not just them, it's their stakeholders across the system. And I suppose there are a number of elements to this. And one is, you know, you make the point about capability and those who travel regularly into the region will know that internet availability is patchy, it's non-existent in some parts, speeds very slow in others, and yet it's such an enabling part of many economies in the region. That's one of the reasons. I mean, there are, of course, a number why we are actually doing it, but it's one of the reasons we've been quite supportive of efforts within the region, including at the specific requests of leaders to help them build high-speed capability. In the case of Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, obviously that's happening through the Coral Sea undersea cable work that we're doing. But of course, link to that needs to be, particularly in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, a whole suite of work around regulatory reform, pricing, all of the areas which can conceivably benefit from high-speed internet, connecting societies within themselves and beyond. So, work is underway. I can only see it continuing to grow. It's an area of focus when Pacific Island leaders, in particular, meet our Prime Minister. It's often something that they raise and want to talk about. They can see the economic opportunity that flows from it. As we do that, though, we need to be appropriately focused on building cyber resilience for all of the reasons that are well understood, I'm sure, in this room and beyond. For the question. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm Gracia from the University of York, United Kingdom. I would like to ask one question. Considering the dynamic DEFED budget on development, ODA, and poverty issues, how could you manage the mechanism of bilateral aid among each countries that you mentioned about Indo-Pacific, alongside with the global development policy as we are aware about sustainable development goals? So, how could you maintain and manage from the bilateral mechanism alongside with the global development aid or global mechanism in STGs? Thank you. Okay, well, look, thanks very much, Pratia. And I'm impressed that you've come all the way from York in the UK. And I'm sure you'll have much to contribute to the discussions. I mean, obviously, the role of DEFED, and I'm regularly in discussion, I must say, with Matthew Rycroft about a number of these sorts of issues. I mean, this is core work for any organisation doing development, how you balance bilateral programs with global programs, with overarching goals that we have. But, you know, we have skilled teams of specialists whose job it is to do this. I mean, different governments at different times may want to put different emphases on the programs, elements of the program. But the way we integrate it in a development relationship which is increasingly about partnership. I use the word partnership a lot in what I had to say because it features so strongly in our relationships with partners, particularly in the Pacific, but also across Southeast Asia and further to the West. So, look, I'm not sure if there's a more detailed technical answer that you're looking for. I'm sure I've got a number of colleagues here who will seek you out during the break and engage you perhaps at the level of detail that you're looking for. But I mean, I don't see the two as necessarily being in tension. Of course, there are always choices to be made, but broadly, the bilateral programs are absolutely consistent with and supporting the overarching goals, including when it comes to a focus on SDGs. Secretary, thank you very much for the presentation. And thank you for acknowledging the work that Richard Moore did in providing, I guess, another perspective. You mentioned your jurisdiction and disagreed between the short-term description of diplomacy versus the long-term elements of development. But I wonder if in Richard's suggestions that went beyond that and touched on areas of expertise that clearly you're building within the actual department. There seem to be almost trying to bring some of the functions that have been devolved to the private sector and some of the larger facilities on that to bring some of that expertise back within the department to assist in areas that are very much handy in hand with diplomacy, such as the policy dialogue and other elements. So I'm just wondering as to whether some of these suggestions are slightly more independent but very, very linked agency to build some of that expertise, there's a chance for more consideration of that. Thanks very much for the question. And of course, although I took issue, I think that was the term I used. With that particular element of it, I mean, that's not a big argument to have, obviously. There are quite a number of recommendations that Richard has made. It was only published yesterday. I've had a look at it. We'll have a more careful look at it. The broader point you make, though, the specific one about your expertise, how we work within our own system across it, whether we have expertise inside the department or whether we seek to draw it in as we need it. I mean, that's an ongoing dialogue and discussion. I've got to say our principal sector specialists have for me anyway, a big role to play in what we do, whether it's in relation to governance or gender or health. So I'm very, I think I'd say in this company and in theirs, indeed, anywhere admiring of their expertise and the role that they play. What we do in any one situation depends a little bit. I mean, as we're building the undersea cable, we've had to, cables, we've had to bring expertise in. Obviously, as we develop and stand up the Australian infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific, we're looking again at expertise. We've brought in expertise from across government. When it comes to our regional health security center. So look, I'm very sort of open to that. I wouldn't say it was either all in or all out. We need to be flexible about that. But I want to leave a very strong message that I recognize a very important role for expertise wherever it is. Thank you so much. And we'll now let the Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade get back to her busy day. And you can continue with the next session. I'll hand back to Stephen. Thank you. I will no one else get up. We're gonna go straight on to the keynote speech. And I'd like to call on the director of the Crawford School, Professor Helen Sullivan to introduce our keynote speaker. Helen. Well, good morning, everyone. And it's always a bit alarming when I stand up and people start leaving, but I'm hoping that's not gonna be a trend. It's my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, but also our Mitchell Areta. Before I do that, though, I just want to reflect for a moment on why this conference is so important to Crawford and to the ANU. And for me in particular as director of Crawford, this represents the first major event in our year. Now, the Provost told you that students are just assembling on campus. Crawford students have been at hard at work for at least six weeks. We start earlier than everybody else because public policy demands more of everyone. And you will all know that from your daily lives. But the mark, really, of our year starting is this conference. And I say that because the conference represents absolutely everything that Crawford stands for. It focuses on the things that we hold really dear, sustainability, integrity, and capability. And it brings together those people who are concerned about those issues from the academic, the public, the private, the not-for-profit sectors from in Australia and beyond. And that is what Crawford is all about and that is a key part of the ANU's mission. And so this conference is wonderful for all sorts of reasons. And I am so grateful to our longstanding partners, particularly David Arnold, who have worked with Stephen to make this conference such a success. But I just wanted you to know that as well as having the wonderful exchanges that you'll be having, you also represent to the school and the university everything that we believe is important. And perhaps only at this moment in time is it possible that inner university expertise would be given a round of applause, but I'm delighted that that is the case. So having said all of that, I now want to get on with the reason I'm standing here, which is to, as I say, to introduce our keynote speaker and Mitchell Orritor. And it's important for me to acknowledge that this is the 2019 Mitchell aeration as well as the keynote address for the conference. And for those of you who don't know, the Mitchell aeration is a series named after the philanthropist and seriously core funder of the Development Policy Center and a great supporter of the Policy Center. And this lecture is the seventh in the series of talks by leading development thinkers. And so you and the audience both in the room and around the world are getting both the keynote and the Mitchell aeration and you're only having to pay once. So that's a good deal. And what to say about our keynote speaker, Dr. Donald Kabaruka served two five year terms as the president of the African Development Bank from 2005 to 2015. During his tenure, the bank's capital tripled and its portfolio doubled. He also served as Rwanda's minister of finance and economic planning from 1997 to 2005 and oversaw Rwanda's economic reconstruction after the end of the Civil War. He is currently senior advisor at the Boston Consulting Group. He holds a PhD in economics from Glasgow University, which among other things says the distinction of being one of the wettest places, I think, in Europe. So kudos for you for tolerating that. His keynote address is entitled Africa and the Global Landscape Emerging Trends and the Way Forward. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Donald Kabaruka. Thank you. Thank you for the kind words and good morning. Please forgive my voice. It's a pleasure to be in Australia. It's my first time. I almost came here and last minute I didn't come and I said, why? Australia applied to join the African Development Bank when I was still the leader of the bank. We were excited. We're all very excited because African Australia are separated by long distances. But we're linked by very strong human factors which often are invisible. Whether it is missionaries, faith groups, students, Australians of African origin, many people from these islands who live in Africa and so on. And so when Australia applied to join the African Development Bank and went through all the legal processes, we were very excited. And the then Prime Minister invited me to Brisbane and I had booked my ticket. And then something happened in Australian politics. That is not for me to comment. And the next government sent me a letter apologizing that Australia had other priorities for the moment. And so I cancelled my visit. I however remained convinced that at some point in the future that decision could be reconfirmed. And when I was invited to come here, I came here to convince you, to speak to you that yes, Australia is an Indo-Pacific power. You are not a superpower, but you are a power. But beyond that, you are a major global player. Not simply in the G20, but in terms of the other factors which I want to describe today. It is extremely important that Australia plays its role in this region as it should. But beyond that, it is critically important that Australia plays a strategic role globally which it deserves and should play. And that's why I got me here. Never mind the cold which I have today. So I want to thank Steve for inviting me and the Center at the University. Yesterday I met many of my colleagues, African diplomats here, I want to thank you for coming and for the work you do. Because I do believe that this is a common undertaking we have to do together. I learned yesterday that I've got 500,000 Australians of African origin, of African descent. I know for a fact that in many peacekeeping missions in the African theaters, many Australian women are there in many of those theaters. And no many African students who are here in different universities exchanging knowledge with you. So I'm here to make a case. I don't know whether I will succeed, but I will try. I will try and this why it is important for me and others who are here like me. I'm sure there is general agreement today that something's not right with the world we're living in today, irrespective of which part of the world you are from. Something is broken with a multilateral system we have known since World War II. Refined of course in subsequent years in different ways but something is definitely very wrong. And it cannot be resolved by simply fine tuning. Something has to change. Now, since 1945, there have been attempts to fine tune that order in the following way. The United Nations in 1945, which was formed to bring to the end the world of conflict. Of course, dominated by a few members of the Security Council has not succeeded. It has succeeded to prevent a global war but has not succeeded to prevent localized conflict which has decimated millions. And over time, the solutions we have had which are peacekeeping have not worked. And this why peacekeeping presupposes there's a conflict between two states and that those two states reach a peace treaty which has to be then observed, supervised by neutral powers. But there are some conditions for that to succeed. Number one, those forces had to be neutral between the two parties. They had to be invited by both parties their conflicts and they had to be minimal use of us. The kind of conflict we have had since then may be the exception of the conflict in India and Pakistan and a few others, Israel and Syria have been conflict within the states or what you call between the states and non-state asymmetrical actors for which the peacekeeping doctrine cannot function. There have been attempts by many sectarians of the UN to try and deal with this matter but it remains outstanding. And I'll come to it and tell you what is important. But these asymmetrical conflicts are not limited to Africa, to Latin America or to Southeast Asia. They are conflicts which can erupt anywhere on planet Earth. But there was a second attempt in the 1970s during the energy crisis, global energy crisis. Then the major powers formed what was known as the G7. The most important economy is the G7. Subsequently became the G7 plus one. I think subsequently G8. I don't know if it's now G8 minus one, I'm not sure. But there was an attempt by those countries to deal with that crisis at the time. It worked for a while. But fast forward to the global financial crisis. Even the G7 or G7 plus one or G8 was not fit for purpose. So a new informal group, the G20 was formed of which Australia is a member. My judgment is that at the beginning this group was extremely effective. The global economy was at a near death experience. And this particular grouping took measures which limited the damage and set us on the path where hopefully this thing could be avoided in the future. But it's obvious to some of us that from those told reforms of the UN, even the Bretton Road institutions, we now need a different approach, collective action on things from climate change, epidemics, security, trade and migration. The instruments at our disposal for collaboration are much weaker than they have been at any point since 1945. And yet as the minister was saying, in 2015 the world came together. I think someone mentioned this here and we elaborated a charter. The Sustainable Development Goals of the kind of world we needed. Economic, social, protection of the planet, et cetera. That charter was a charter no longer between the rich and the poor, which was the Millennium Development Goals, not between the East and West, not even the North and South, not between developed and developing countries, not even the emerging and low income countries. It was a charter for humanity together, irrespective of where you live and how much wealth you have. It was a charter which created a lot of expectations. So, but where did you go from there? Just a year later, in many countries, suddenly, just a year later, elections in a number of countries in the so-called rich countries and we have now unilateralism, protectionism, not to say isolationism. We now have a narrow nationalism where the populace electorates are asking their governments, wait a minute, globalization is not working for me and it is a fault to begin with, foreigners, including migrants. That kind of narrative has given birth to a new class of political actors who have made it difficult for the implementation of the charter of 2015. Now, despite this pressure for zero-sum games, you win, I lose, or my country first, or even my country alone, do we have to throw away the baby with the water or even the baby with the bathtub in the water? Can you acknowledge the failings, first of all, the achievements of globalization which has reduced poverty around the world, lifted millions out of misery, including especially in this region and including Africa? But we have also to acknowledge the failures of globalization which now I'm told is called globalism, whatever that means. Now, what were the two main failures of globalization? I think number one is that globalization benefits were not what it distributed between and within nations. Something nowadays called inequality just to use the acronym. It is a challenge we must face. In Australia, in Asia, in America and Europe, everywhere, we have to handle these issues of those who believe that, yes, globalization is working, but not for me. But there's been a second workiness of globalization which has been that the pain of globalization have not been well managed. After 1945, whatever you say of the welfare states, whatever you say of the issues with social policy, there were attempts to deal with the pains of globalization. I think we have to accept that there have been failures in how we deal with the pains of globalization. I'm saying this because I do believe part of what Steve, you call aid policy, incidentally I have an issue with that one. I'm hoping next time I come it won't be Australia aid policy. If I will have another name and I'll come to it because probably the time for that kind of policies has evolved. But I'll come to it near the end of Maramax. But that was an attempt both within nations to have social policies which manage the pains of globalization and between nations to manage the pains of globalization and international development was one of them. And let us be honest it is not working at the moment. Now for those who believe that we can go back to isolationism, my country first or my country only we have been there before. All they have to do is to read economic history. We have been there before in the 1930s and it ended in disaster. And of course it cannot work. It cannot work because epidemics don't know borders. Epidemics don't end up in the Indo-Pacific area. Terrorism does not end up in the Middle East. Climate change is not a phenomenon of any particular region. It affects some more than others. Managing migration is not an issue within the North and the South. It is an issue within our countries and between countries. I am sure for many of you who live in this region when you read the news about migrants between Africa and Europe you have been feeling that the level of migration between Europe and Africa has increased it has not. In fact, the biggest migration within the African continent is within the African continent. The level of migrants living in Africa to Europe is at the same level as it was in 1990. You are welcome to go to look at figures. So in dealing with migration we are talking about migration within regions within the continents between the continents and it is not something we can handle within a particular region alone we are talking together and it is possible it can be done. So I am here to argue at a time like this when for example global trade I am sure my studio will be seeing that tomorrow global trade at the beginning of 2018 was growing at about 5% by the time at Christmas end of the year it had flattened out it was growing at 0% I don't know what the numbers are now it cannot be these are challenges we have to deal with within countries within the group of so called rich countries poor countries these are challenges how to face together it sounds like a new form of conversation but it is a conversation we must have and I am glad to be here today in Australia to try and make that case of course Australia is an Indo-Pacific power it is a nation power it is quite right that you focus on your immediate environment but Australia is a global player it has to continue to play that role how that is done is a matter of policy is a matter of mechanics selectivity within the actions of major players is something which is fine but the idea that we can deal with issues of this region and by indirect effects we contribute to global prosperity is right but has its own limitations let me give an example last time I was checking the number of Australian mining companies in Africa a large and small the number has been increasing over time and I like that last time I was the largest international mining conference in Cape Town I found that the number of Australian companies Chinese companies were actually increasing the number I said this is very good but why don't we build on this relationship even further not simple about extractives but building the value chains around extractives what can we learn in terms of sound policies around this particular sector now I don't want to say that our relationship should be built simply around extractives but you have done very well in this particular area I mean your country, according to Steve has not known a recession for 30 years you'll have to tell us the miracles it must be the great things you do in your policies for which we can learn it must also something to do with the way you manage your resources and working to learn but having said that why do I think it is important to work together now with permission from ambassadors who are here let me tell you that far too often when people refer to Africa especially over the last 15 years there have been three narratives narrative number one associated with the former Prime Minister of the UK around 2003 who said that Africa was a scar on the conscience of the world I'm not saying that I agree with him but this one is and he said it in good faith he was trying to argue for great action to double aid to Africa to increase trade openness and he was calling making a moral call that Africa was a scar on the conscience of the world 2003 or 2004 but the same Prime Minister about five years later said and I quote Africa is the most exciting place to be in the world today and in most cases he was right probably and it happens to be someone I know quite well why am I saying this you are here kilometers away from Africa the things you read will be probably from both extremes one extreme will be Africa the miserable place disease burden poverty refugees conflicts what can we do for that continent is a narrative still very strong in the aid narrative what can we do for them there's another narrative which started around 2005 that about is called Africa rising I'm sure you read about that which positions it for the first time in 30 years Africa turned the corner and for the first time the real per capita incomes were growing above population increase but my humble view from my knowledge of that continent is that both are mistaken views I think the era of exceptionalism for any continent is over I'll be saying near the end of my conversation with you that I think the narrative that you had poverty in the south worse in the north is probably going to go coming to its end the narrative that resources will come from the north to the south and by the way policies as well also is over nowadays resources are available in the north in the south in the east and the west and incidentally even in terms of the policy from works we're no longer sure which part of the world has the best set of policies we don't know at least we thought with the collapse of the war of Berlin in 1989 that the communists part of the world had got it wrong so even a famous American professor wrote a book called the end of history meaning that the liberal world the neoclassical economics had won over the state so we now know since the global financial crisis the deep in the heart of the liberal economic itself had issues to handle so as we sit here today we're not sure what is it that constitutes the right policies for a particular country just look at around the G20 table the countries around the table including Australia have come to that particular position from different positions we know what is it that can kill good economic policy but the answer to what is it that makes for good economic policy outcomes we don't know and a lot of the aid industry was beat around we have the resources but also know what is it that you should do to have sound economic outcomes and the answer just to you today that world probably is over as well is the time for us to learn from each other north, south, east, west so called low income high income, emerging markets there are lessons whether it is living with the environment inequalities inclusion all these issues which are challenges to humanity and which the sustainable development goals are limited to 200 but let me quickly add again especially with friends of my ambassadors Africa is not Australia we are 55 countries we have the same challenges we have a lot of similarities but we are different we are 55 countries in fact 66% of our populations live in about 70 countries what we call the regional engines in the majority of countries these are very small populations so we are not there is no country called Africa we are a continent but we are trying to overcome that and this is what I would like to come to as part of what we can do together now if you really press nowadays you will find probably different ideas of what Africa is doing but I wanted to say to you that if excluded probably 4-5 countries for particular challenges and with very huge demographic density the rest of Africa actually is doing quite well you will not know about reading the press but it is doing quite well many economies are growing at about 6% to 7% outside those few I can come to later and which means if that is sustained they double their GDP every 10 years but also a continent with very high demographics which I will come to in a moment it is not simply enough to grow the economies you have to grow the economies beyond population increase you have to grow the economies also creating jobs not simply expanding the national output we still have many challenges we don't know how to manage community super cycles like you did in Australia you seem to be doing very well I would like to find out how you do this but you seem to have managed on how to deal with the community super cycles we still have issues with sustainability some countries make progress and then they fall back including some of the very large economies which have got a huge impact on the neighbourhood here you seem to be making progress all the time hopefully that you continue we have issues with translating economic growth into jobs you know transformation because at the end of the day the issue is not expanding your economy but ensuring that you are operating higher up on the ladder of the global value chains we still have issues there we have huge problems with inclusion and inequalities in some countries the genetic coefficient is as high as 0.7 I think maybe only Brazil is at high we are now having a new problem and this way I go back to this point I was making at the beginning of dealing with security related challenges emanating from radicalism or radical politics in other parts of the world outside Africa and it is important to explain this it is quite possible even likely that even a country like Australia in the not distant future you will be handling security related issues terrorism related challenges not because of what is happening in Australia but because of challenges elsewhere in the world we are separated from the Middle East by the stretch of the Red Sea we have the same people across the Middle East and parts of the North Africa and therefore some of the security challenges we face are the same and those have huge impacts on economics, social fabric development and everything I don't have time to go into now but those are not things we can handle alone but that said I want to leave you a message that Africa is doing much better than it has done perhaps for the first time in the last 30 years except for the issues I have just mentioned so how are we hoping to let me mention the first one just imagine if Australia just imagine for once close your eyes and imagine that you needed a visa to go to Queensland that the northern Australian territory had its own currency that western Australia was another country that Victoria had its own immigration laws that across this continent you have five, six currencies I don't think Australia will be the same so the first decision which African leaders have made which in my judgment would be significant for a very long time to come is the signing of the African continental free trade area which will be the largest such area in the world it has not yet been ratified by all countries but it has been signed by all countries except for so we are on the way to getting ratifications and completing this exercise which will make the African economies all of the same as you do here in Australia there might be different places, different governments but there will be free movement of people, a single air market and so on but we don't think this simply about tariffs it's about non-tariff restrictions movement of people single air markets greater stability, greater cooperation people-to-people contracts now just think if you can succeed what that will do for the stability of the world the second thing we are doing I was very happy to hear your minister mentioning it here is our infrastructure I think she mentioned that your country will be setting up a nation infrastructure firm that is a very good thing to do and I want to encourage you to continue in my years as head of the African bank that was almost 60% of what we did and we are trying everything we can on the African continent to modernize our infrastructure as well there's railways airports, maritime ports IT communication etc this will bring down the cost of doing business will expand to the south of our markets and will back up the African continent or free trade area now sometimes this means that we work with traditional partners and what is now euphemistically called non-traditional partners usually meant to talk about China I would like to use this opportunity to say that as far as I am concerned I think our relationship with China on the issues of infrastructure has been extremely positive and I would like to say that the public has been extremely positive it has enabled us to upgrade our infrastructure Kenya for example has upgraded a railway which was a hundred years old it was called the Lunatic Express now it is a modern railway I have read about it Mr. Ambassador same for Ethiopia many airports being built around the world around Africa we are working with the traditional partners in Europe and elsewhere to do the same I think this is something which from what I heard from your secretary if you can do the same in this region if you definitely help boost economies here and I want to encourage you to continue and of course look beyond the Asia-Pacific one more thing we are doing is on peace and security now I mentioned earlier that between 1945 and now the way we have responded to the tragedies through the peacekeeping channel that should continue, I have no problem with it even though its effectiveness sometimes leaves many issues so what African leaders have decided to do is that we are going to take responsibility in parts for stability and security on our continent first of all through the continental working on these issues of inclusion and inequality promoting fair societies but also creating our own Africa peace fund and I was honoured three years ago when leaders of Africa asked me to lead the exercise on setting up an Africa peace fund and I want to set you that at the last meeting of the EU Nadis who were about 1 million dollars to create that fund now the fund is not meant to supplant what the UN does it is meant to give us capacity to deal with the crisis up front prevention mediation panels of the wise to ensure that crises don't become active conflicts in this way we are hoping that we shall be able to contribute to an active an actively promoted peace on the continent so let me come to my end by saying the following well you could say but where in Australia we have enough problems of our own the Indo-Pacific era is already very complicated why should we care about what is going on and how we can consider you might be right but here is my answer to you Africa today is 1.2 billion people by 2050 Africans will probably be equal to China and India combined the median age of Africans today is 19 years by 2050 there will be one European for every 10 Africans I want you to reflect about those numbers and what they mean for all of us in the world I have not talked about India and the Saudi station because the numbers in Africa also reflect what is happening in the Saudi station we no longer have a world where we could say we are on our own we are in a world where we have to be searching for strategic relationships as a result of the demographic dynamics of the world whether it is security whether it is economic development whether it is epidemic and I want to reflect about this especially for the younger generation in this room now I am not saying that human relationships are driven by demographic alone but they are driven by what those demographics means I begin by mentioning here that there is something nowadays maybe Masoud will be talking about this tomorrow the jargon talk about the multipolarity of the multipolar world with all that it means we will be living in a world which is completely different from anything we have known in the past in each part of the world we have to reflect what it means for all of us for our neighbourhood and I want to suggest here that African demographics demographics of South East Asia will be a major factor in the future development of planet Earth and I am sure that in institutions like this you are fully focused on this matter I want also to add that on this issue of sea water part of multipolarity was that in the past money will go from rich countries, rich governments to poor governments but as the minister was saying right now nowadays governments have less money than private markets so we have to figure out how to use the resources we have within our governments to leverage the money in the private markets to ensure that programs like you have do succeed so I hope I have not been very long but I thought to leave you just one message that you are doing great things in this region Australia is a global power focused on the Asia Pacific but you are a major player in the world and the world is looking to Australia to play that role in the world beyond your neighbourhood I began by saying that when I received the application of Australia to join the African development I was very very excited Robert here was working with us on that issue your former prime minister then wrote to me a nice letter I think the parliament here had gone through all the motions incidentally for those who are worried about the budget it was not a lot of money in case you believe well Australia was about to just open the check for these Africans no no no joining these institutions is about what is known in the business as Collabo Capital Collabo means is a guarantee so suppose you subscribe to the I don't know 3% shareholder and that means half a billion dollars what actually come out of the taxpayers is less than 6% of that over time because of the pressure on the budget of Australia it was very small the rest was Collabo Capital which is never called has never been called but I think as a result of domestic politics that is not happening why do I think this is important it is important not because of the channel of aid from Australia to Africa no it is a channel to direct trade investments people-to-people relationships between Africa and Australia it is a channel to go from Australia aid to Australia trade investment in Africa at a very minimal cost to the people of Australia but greater benefits for our two continents and for the world and therefore I look forward again to your application I am no longer president of the bank but as an African I look forward to ensuring that as you have done in the Asian development bank as a world bank as IMF you come back so we can work together to go beyond aid to trade investment people-to-people relationships and the hand of these global commons I have mentioned from climate to terrorism, security and epidemics I want to thank you for inviting me and I look forward to what I will learn from this conference in the next two days. Thank you Thanks very much for a fascinating address I was very glad that you mentioned conflict prevention and peace building because that's obviously essential and I'm very glad to say that Qatar is the Secretary General of the UN is pushing very hard that countries adopt conflict prevention as a major part of their policies are some African countries taking that seriously and can you mention one or two where that's being implemented please Thank you Let me tell you that one of the most exciting stories coming out of our region in recent years is the end of the conflict in Ethiopia and the Eritrea which opens the way for greater stability in the home this has not been a conflict which has been managed by foreign countries it is a conflict which has been managed, resolved by the countries themselves and in the region because often people talk about Africa as if they were able to manage conflicts but think about this particular outcome second think about Somalia the conflict Somalia has gone for over 30 years Africa's first failed state the United Nations could not deploy its troops there because the doctrine I mentioned in 1945 did not allow that invitation by two parties minimal use of force neutrality it was the countries in the region Uganda Kenya, Ethiopia Djibouti and I believe Burundi under the African Union of Spices which deployed men and women into Somalia with the help of the European Union and a few countries through the UN transforms and thanks to that effort we begin to see the end of that bloody conflict there are serious issues but we are at the cusp of the state of Somalia coming back from a failed state completely purely mediated dealt with by African countries so yes we have challenges in other parts of the world often because of conflicts imported into Africa is after the Libyan crisis but for those conflicts for which we can handle either through diplomatic efforts or dealing with a socio-economic origin I believe significant work is underway and I think the African Union Peace Fund will be a huge contribution Thank you very much that was a splendid speech and I totally agree with your view that aid policy is probably a term that should be consigned to history in terms of a question can I ask you what is the future specifically for Nigeria the future for Nigeria but why the future for Nigeria not the future of the United States No, Nigeria is a great country I mean this is Africa's first economy they have challenges of their own economic but my expectations are that the country is moving forward not backward it is some of you are still very young here if you don't remember in the 1960s two countries in Africa went through bloody civil wars one was Nigeria the other was the Congo but they recovered Nigeria has managed through the violent oil crisis they have managed through its governance they are now going through an election and let us give them support for what they are trying to do but I am not here to predict the future but if you want you and I can engage in this exercise and we shall do that for many countries around the world Thank you for the fascinating talk my name is Stephanie Copis Campbell I am wearing two hats today supporting this important event today so thank you for coming on the behalf of Harold Mitchell and the board I also do a lot of work in Papua New Guinea and we are starting a fairly significant project to look at the youth bulge and the growing youth bulge in PNG and in some specific areas that are conflict prone so noting that many countries in Africa also have a youth bulge which can be an opportunity and also a challenge do you have any good models that you can share from your experience in ways that have been effective helping that youth bulge to grow to an opportunity and not a challenge for the region let me try to understand this it's about natural resource management so we are all familiar with this thing called the demographic dividend so which is that window where the labour force is bigger than retirees or the very young people now we don't know how the Asian region handled this because this region handled it very well the South East Asian region I don't know about some of these specific countries we know that Latin America mishandled it and they missed it we in Africa were at the point of getting there and a lot of thinking among our leadership and policy makers is exactly the challenge you are facing in Papua New Guinea what is it that we can do to make sure the demographic dividend becomes a dividend not its opposite and it is clear that it's about three things number one is about the stability of our countries I was surprised one time visiting Norway and I found at one university a young Somali who emigrated at age 8 and was a nuclear physicist and I kept saying to myself I hope this guy will come back one day to his country so it's about the stability of our countries first of all the second thing is about how we invest in education but not education of the past because I think the challenge we are having is that we are thinking of educating the labour of the future using models of the past under which the lack of me were educated so we have to rethink exactly what it means in each of our countries I'm on the board of something called the Africa Leadership University and we are trying to reinvent the university of the future not the university models which developed in the middle ages the third issue is around technology especially digital technology how we combine these three stability a new form of higher education or third level education and taking advantage of evolving technologies to ensure that the demographic dividend becomes a dividend now I have no recipe for our friends Papua New Guinea we are struggling with the same things ourselves but we are happy to exchange experiences with you Thank you very much for a really inspiring talk I appreciated your recounting of recent history in terms of deep history Australia and Africa were one and currently that's reflected in our sharing agroecological zones my question to you is moving forward with the opportunities for looking at climate change mitigation research in relation to agricultural research and development and I say that recognising that Australia already benefits we have African grass species we have African indigenous livestock here helping our agriculture but moving forward how do we work together and what is your vision for that Thank you Amazing question I'm not sure I have a good answer for you tomorrow you can ask Masoud but what the science says about Africa on climate change is that the eastern part of our continent will get more prone to floods and the western part of the continent it will be the opposite and already we see a sense of that the southern part of Africa like Australia some challenges of water management and unstable climatic development and you are so right if there is one area we share this continent, our continent is how we can work together on climate change my very first contact with Australia my very first contact with Australia was to ask them whether we can work together on water management in some countries in Africa and I must pay homage to them that although we do not have a structured relationship they are not members we begin some programs together to try and benefit from how this great continent manages its water and I'm hoping that those kind of programs can be intensified going forward and I'm hoping that globally although you are focused on Indo-Pacific globally the continent of Africa and Australia can work together to continue global advocacy for the Paris Agreement I'm hoping that whichever government is in power in this country whatever it is that your political divide may suggest that this is a combat of our generation is a combat for our children and grandchildren and we must continue globally to act together to try and respect the commitments we made in the Paris Agreement whether it is the financing or the different aspects of that agreement and I'm pretty hopeful that this and the next government I'm not I'm not proud to interfere in the domestic matters that we shall work together the African and Australia can continue to be partners in the combat for climate change so Dr. Kabaruki the point of the Mitchell aeration is to bring leading thinkers to share with us what they know from their deep experience but also to confront us and find us and challenge us and unsettle us and I think that you have managed in an extremely diplomatic and generous way to do all of those things and to leave us with some profound thoughts both about how we think about Africa but also I think you have touched on whether you knew it or not so I suspect that you did some challenges that Australia has to face itself in terms of how it thinks about its role in the world but also you've challenged us to really think about what it means to talk about collaboration and partnership and how that has to be different for the future so I think you have given us the most fantastic platform for discussion for the next two days and I want everybody here to join me in thanking you again and now we have morning tea so please make your way and if you can remember all of Ashley's instructions about queuing quickly thank you then there is a new generation of DFAT investments that support knowledge institutions in an effort to foster evidence based development discussion in their countries for instance the Indonesian knowledge sector specifically places research and nurturing research institutions in developing countries as part of its sorry at the heart of its work and now we have seen larger programs that embed knowledge brokers and researchers within their management and decision making structures such as the Australia Pacific Training Coalition Stage 3 and Vanuatu's Governance for Growth program here the idea is to create real-time learning and feedback loops within programs that allow for more iterative adaptive and politically informed implementation with a robust empirical basis yet there remain many obstacles to impact on the formulation of development programs and their implementation or the fostering of evidence based policy discussion in our partner countries some of these factors are outside our control for our news cycle and the pace of change has meant that evidence based policy making has become something of a luxury throughout the world even in the context of prosperous and long established democracies if you look back to some policy agendas that we prosecuted 30 or 40 years ago they'd be virtually impossible in today's climate and in some countries where we work inadequate availability and accessibility of data by default or design and the closing civic space hampers effectiveness and our capacity to implement but there are many issues that are within our control where we can up our game researchers often ask why can't policy makers read more than two pages and why don't they listen properly to the nuances in our findings and policy makers ask why don't researchers focus on the real game on the real things that matter and why can't they make timely inputs into policy processes and there has become a greater awareness in recent years that in order to be effective research production and policy making needs to be a process within between producers and users of research in order to maximise impact and to make sure that research is produced in a more timely, practical and politically informed manner there remains some way to go policy makers can do better in designing and using research programs to impact on real time formulation we can do better in terms of devising topics and hypotheses to test not waiting for the dissemination of final papers but rather engaging with researchers to hear tentative findings after field work and the like research findings might be better conveyed through Chatham House discussions and roundtables and I also think there needs to be a level of trust and maturity and sufficient confidence to call each other out sorry call each other out researchers need to push back when necessary about silly ideas where they're not particularly interesting analytical questions or the research topic is too instrumentalised to have value as a research product and then policy makers need to push back to a certain a set of research outputs but policy makers also need to understand the incentives for academics in terms of publications and in terms of red lines around independence so this panel provides insights from a number of researchers and practitioners who are engaged in the Australian Development Assistance Programme regarding these ongoing debates our speakers today will give short internet presentations we'll take only questions of clarification after each presentation and hold deeper questions until the Q&A at the end so our first speaker is Chris Adams he is the Institute for Human Security and Social Change Senior Learning and Outreach Advisor he has almost three decades of experience in the community sector and in international development and the focus of his work is on strategic planning program design and evaluation research and documentation and Chris was previously the Director of Development Effectiveness at ACFIT and has worked with Oxfam in various roles so I invite you to the podium to champion that in other branches across DFAT but also in terms of providing DFAT funded evidence which is then useful in getting new approaches approved in the form of new program designs and then thirdly and importantly and again as Saku has mentioned DLP and DFAT have worked hard to translate the research into a range of user focus knowledge products not just lengthy dense articles which NGO people like me can't understand but a series of short conceptual papers policy briefs, comparative case studies guidelines and tools which are useful at a range of levels and across a range of practitioners within DFAT and then they haven't just produced these knowledge products DLP, universities and DFAT have worked together to determine how best to communicate those products across DFAT which is a very large complex diverse organization and I think they've done that in three ways and I'll come the first one of course is by engaging directly with DFAT the boxers in grey and particularly through the governance fragility and water branch as the principle interlocutor between the researchers and the bigger DFAT but also engage with the wider community of development practitioners through conferences like this through roundtables, through workshops through trainings, through book launches which has helped shift the world of ideas in which DFAT operates and other development agencies operate and also working with individual consultants who as was mentioned yesterday do much of the design and evaluation work in DFAT and I think it's these three approaches working together which have helped drive change in DFAT but getting tailored research products into the hands of people inside DFAT doesn't necessarily lead to changes in programming and it's really been the governance and fragility and water branch inside DFAT who have done the heavy lifting in terms of actually bringing about change in DFAT programming and DFAT policy and they've done that I think in three ways firstly nosing around amongst existing programs that DFAT is supporting and actually finding examples of good developmental leadership which are actually already there without any support from DLP or the governance branch surfacing those, capturing them sharing them, amplifying them secondly they've supported two or three sort of specifically designed programs for example the Pacific leadership program coalitions for change which have served as experimental hot houses the testing, how developmental leadership can lead to better development outcomes and then thirdly and more recently starting to influence other people working in other branches through training through roundtables through regional meetings through peer review and appraisal processes that has led to an expanding number of programs over time and people working in those programs have then gone on to influence other programs so it starts to build a critical mass of people and programming which is not yet at a point where it's self-sustaining but does provide a strong basis for change moving forward and importantly the evidence I think and those people is now being reflected in changes in policy that's my eight minutes up done so just to wrap up then a lot of the diffusion of innovation literature and research uptake literature talks about sort of nice linear paths where you have stepped cumulative change but I think in reality it's actually much more messy it's contested, there's competing ideas there's lots of people supporting change opposing change there's multiple starting points and pathways to change some of which work, some of which fail and you get this very uneven take up across the institution over time but that said I think there are some key success factors emerging particularly as I said the strong partnership between DFAT and the research institutes the long-term commitment he's been running now for 12 years, 13 years the negotiated research agenda an agreement between the researchers and DFAT developing these user-focused knowledge products building this network of change agents who can help drive change across the institution and then importantly not having one approach to change experimenting, learning and adapting as you go I'll leave it there Thanks Chris Any questions of clarification? No? Okay we'll move on to our next speaker Andrea Babon who leads the engagement on the PAPA New Guinea Australia Governance Partnership and manages the Institute for Human Security and Social Change Research Fellows Andrea brings extensive experience working at the interface between research policy and practice and she's worked for over 15 years in a range of research and policy roles for a number of NGOs sorry Government and NGOs across the Asia Pacific region including in PAPA New Guinea, Indonesia and Cambodia over to you Andrea Thanks Saku So I'm really pleased to be able to talk about processes to support research translation uptake and impact and I'm going to be drawing on my personal experience working with the Institute for Human Security and Social Change as Saku mentioned on the PAPA New Guinea Australia Governance Partnership as it's now known was previously the P&G Governance Facility and I guess the Institute often finds itself playing a knowledge brokering role supporting interaction and engagement between researchers and practitioners and encouraging knowledge exchange supporting research use and hopefully strengthening research impact I'll be drawing on our practical experience today and my experience in P&G in particular I think Saku and her introduction probably covered a lot of the material that I was going to in setting the context which is really that in the last decade there's been a turn to knowledge and learning within the development sector largely to support evidence informed decision making and adaptive management but also recognising the importance of context and understanding local political economies so this has led to a range of providers delivering research knowledge and learning services from universities to think tanks and private providers and a range of models from learning partners research help desks and knowledge platforms and so it was in this context that the Institute was engaged to support the P&G Governance Partnership to develop and maintain a knowledge platform that could inform and guide policy dialogue and a range of knowledge services so these included providing rapid research based on two to five days of desk based research undertaking political economy analysis policy analysis and horizon scanning curating a repository of relevant documents including past aid program reports commissioning longitudinal studies citizen perception surveys and other research and to eventually embed all this in a P&G institution so for those familiar with the Governance and Social Development Resource Centre GSDRC at the University of Birmingham we were essentially meant to develop the Pacific GSDRC but in reality we found that our role and contribution to be quite different so while not conceptualised as knowledge brokering the practice of our work has led us or me at least to view our role as knowledge brokers rather than researchers and so like a mortgage or insurance broker knowledge brokers sit between those who need research or knowledge and those who produce it and we work to understand the needs of the consumer and then draw in our own knowledge relationships and networks to provide the right knowledge product knowledge products in this sense may be academic research, tacit knowledge or lived experience of an issue so as knowledge brokers we're boundary spanners stimulating knowledge exchange of the secondary and other boundaries and I like the image of the old telephone operator as I think it encapsulates what we do essentially we listen we listen to people talk about their work in the language that they use devspeak we listen to the questions they ask and how they grappled in name what they are struggling with and we listen out for ideas from other people or other places we listen out for how women frame or what researchers at the University of P&G or ANU or the Institute of Development Studies are doing we read program documents and academic papers we listen to podcasts and watch webinars and then we try to make sense of all this for policy makers or practitioners and this is the translation role that knowledge brokers play and it's probably one of the most challenging roles of a knowledge broker but it's our role to try and find a common language that can bring diverse forms of knowledge together and to bear on development challenges so we've had a little over two years now developing a knowledge platform to support the P&G Australia Governance Partnership and we've developed a number of models for brokering research evidence and knowledge into the partnership and I hope to be able to expand on some of these later during the panel discussion and Q&A but basically we as you can sort of see the left here we have a number of services that we can offer rapid research helpdesk which tend to be synthesis of existing academic and grey literature and which we do often commission out to our partners at GSDRC or IDS who have research helpdesk themselves and then we review and provide the P&G and the P&G we have a model of primary applied research which we try to draw on local researchers or program staff to undertake and then we provide support for research design, analysis and research ethics and then we have a model for more participatory action research or consultative processes to allow programs or organizations to who are often situated closest to communities and other stakeholders to really engage in bringing in their knowledge and so in all these models it's really important that we build trusting relationships to understand needs and pressures so we work with frontline staff of the governance partnerships to scope research to understand the gap in knowledge and evidence and then develop clear research questions identify an appropriate methodology and suitable researchers and then support them through the research process so it's quite resource intensive it's quite time consuming and it really relies on good solid relationships and there's no one size fits all approach my job would be much easier if there was and if all we did was provide rapid research, desk based research you know of desk based research in a three week turnaround that's pretty easy to provide but in our role brokering in knowledge and research we really try to meet the needs of the partnerships and so there's no single approach or method or discipline or epistemology that we can draw from we have to understand and tailor our approach almost every time so there are a number of challenges also opportunities that we face in working this way and as knowledge brokers firstly we've had to work hard to dispel some common misperceptions of researchers slow and often not applied or practical enough and to demonstrate the benefits of taking time out for implementation and the urgent to think about and plan for research and evidence needs and I think we've had some success at the program level but less at the donor and management level so this relates to the need to build demand for evidence based policy and programming beyond the rhetoric of program designs and bids and build an authorizing environment with donors and at management levels for high quality research and diverse forms of knowledge a key challenge for us has been that most of our workers knowledge brokers is invisible and people don't really know what we do mostly we work to enable others to do better work and as a process knowledge brokering is mostly behind the scenes and hidden it doesn't always or often end up in a product or a paper that people can see and I've just had my timing so I'll go quickly through the others I've listed the insider-outsider role that we play as a knowledge partner as there's both challenges and opportunities here in being an honest broker and a critical friend when brokering research and knowledge but again it can be a challenging position to hold and then working to bring interdisciplinary expertise to bear on development challenges holds enormous potential but it's bloody hard work you have to know a bit about everything but are an expert in none which isn't great for your ego but it is important for being able to meet the variety of needs in a large governance facility with things from leadership to economic empowerment to gender to decentralization so having good interpersonal communication skills are vital for effectively translating research and knowledge for different users and audiences and if you're not good at plain language communications then work with someone who is researchers are often not the best communicators of their work but there are communications and engagement professionals that can help very quickly managing expectations around research timing and quality it takes time to build the relationships and understand needs that are important and important to focus on the process and rigor as measured by usefulness not just methodological rigor and finally there's an opportunity to increase research uptake and use by understanding and challenging the politics of evidence and knowledge so whose knowledge counts and what counts as knowledge and when does evidence matter and when does politics matter and on that I'll finish thank you Thanks Andrea I'll now invite Melissa Camp to present a snapshot of practice in the development sector Melissa has a decade of experience in the design management and evaluation of social policies and programs in Australia and overseas and she's the principal in coffee's research monitoring and evaluation practice Thanks Aku Okay I'll grab one Good morning everyone my name is Melissa I'm excited to be here today to present a piece of work that I was lucky enough to excuse us for a minute while we find Kelly Thank you technical support So I'm talking today about a piece of research that looks like this this is the soft launch of the research piece it's an investigation into how well the development sector in Australia particularly is making use of research evidence as well as how well that research evidence is being communicated it was a project where we surveyed both research users and research producers and also interviewed and had focus groups with both groups very interesting process the thing I'm going to focus on most today there's a lot in this report and I'd encourage you to read it but I'm going to focus on some models that we identified through speaking to these people and I think there are a useful way to frame research communication and research uptake So first I'll start with some conceptual challenges we had and these helped to explain how we came up with the models that I'll move on to and I wanted to focus on was research communication some of the people we spoke to found that to be a problematic term in that it assumes a gap between the research and the end user that needs to be bridged through a process of research communication which holds true for a lot of research particularly academic research but some people who are both research users and research producers that doesn't describe what they do because they are both things at once and so that relates to the second point there some people not everybody but some people felt that the dichotomy between being a research producer and a research user is untrue for them some people perform both jobs in their existing role some people have moved between being a research producer and a research user so for some people that's a problematic distinction and we dealt with that by talking about them more as functions rather than as people if you like so I'll move on to the first two models which I've grouped together because they are more driven by the producers of research these I would summarise them by saying they're more the academic model where the research producer is more likely to publish findings in a journal under model 1 under model 2 there is a more active effort to communicate research findings through blogs more accessible formats but what characterises these two models is that there is that gap between the person who is the producer and they're trying to identify and reach who they see as being the end user and that is the role of research communication usually the research is publishable as well so most of this you would be able to find in an academic research database I won't go through the detail of the models I'll let you read that there and in the report if you have time so the next one I would like to focus on is a model that's more led by the research end users what differentiates it is that the researcher is engaging with the user at the outset sometimes the user is actually commissioning research that they want sometimes the researcher has been sort of insourced into the organisation that wants to use the research evidence and they're actually following specific requests from people who need that evidence in their policy and programming sometimes it looks a little bit more like my job which is the last one there 3C a consulting model where people who are external are sort of being hired as that broker role to research the design of a program or to apply to use external evidence in evaluating a program so I've sort of summarised those as being more like an insourcing model where the organisation is bringing research in via brokers of some form or another and the final model is more rare but under this model the research user and the research producer are working together from the very outset so it's under this model that people say research communication doesn't make sense to me because I'm either the same person doing the research and using the research or we are hand in hand already anyway so we don't need a blog to use this research it's applied research in that sense I've had some feedback that action research is probably the wrong word it's applied research in that it's done within a specific project or policy development piece and it's very obvious how it should apply and be used this is much less likely to be published but that doesn't mean it's not used it's much more likely to be used in practice because it's so close to the end user how am I going? Two minutes I've got two minutes to focus on recommendations so in this report we made some overarching recommendations that speak to everyone in the sector and there are some more detailed recommendations targeted to people who are primarily working on research production and primarily working on evidence use so I'll just, I only have time to focus on the overarching ones so overall what we found is that where the most benefit can be gained is through stronger stakeholder engagement with research there is a recommendation on improving research communication and research products as well but we felt, not so much we felt but the people we interviewed felt that the strongest gains were in having those users engaged in research throughout the project and viewing research as a whole process from beginning to end and having the end report and presenting that as the way that users engage the second one is to view communicating and taking up research as a distinct task that needs organisational investment and specific skills so there we're speaking to organisations about how they allocate resources and staff time and incentives to encourage people to invest in this work most research user organisations the staff within them agreed that research use is a very important part of their role but they felt that they hadn't been able to do as much of it as they would have liked so it's not a it's not an issue of motivation it's an issue of time incentives and resources second last one is to ask or to invite people to focus on or to revisit which of the models you're currently using either to engage stakeholders in your research or to bring research findings into your work the models presented in this presentation and in the report they're not some aren't better than others they're just a range of options depending on what you're trying to achieve but having more options available to you strengthens your ability either to have your research used or to draw in the most relevant research evidence to your policy or programming and finally you've already heard this recommendation but success in this arena depends on relationships built over time regardless of what model you're using having built a relationship between research brokers or research producers and the user is how use is facilitated thank you thanks Melissa our final speaker is Chris Roche talking about the politics and practice of stakeholder engagement Chris is an Associate Professor and Director of the Institute for Human Security and Social Change at La Trobe and the Chair in International Development he's also Deputy Director of the Developmental Leadership Program over to you Chris great thank you so 8 minutes this is a paper I wrote with writing with Sandy Oliver University College London and it comes out of work we've been doing with the Centre of Excellence for Development Impact and Learning which is a DFID funded research program that's trying to look beyond orthodox methods of impact evaluation and synthesis and looking at more complex and innovative ways and luckily I noticed Manny Jimenez is in the room he can deal with any complicated questions on the on schedule which is great thank you Manny so what we've looked at is this is one bit of this research is looking at synthesis reviews in health policy, nutrition policy transport policy, low carbon technology synthesis reviews of the research and all of them say something very similar which is politics actually plays in this space surprise surprise and the institutional context and the politics around it determine uptake as much as the quality of research and the communication process so it's not to downplay the importance of communication and engagement but it is a let's get real there is an elephant in the room and maybe we should speak about it so point 1 point 2 ignoring this is dangerous and it's dangerous because evidence created by the research is located in a political context and that shapes priorities and it determines if people actually listen but it also determines what is funded in the first place and what questions are asked in the first place and pretending that that doesn't happen whoops sorry pretending that that doesn't happen is not helpful so that's important second politics is also ultimately a battle of ideas it's about making judgments about how you balance different interests how moral questions are answered and I'm sorry this keeps doing that and it's this process of negotiation dialogue and contestation which actually leads to ideas becoming cemented and institutionalized and pretending that that process isn't important and trying to sideline it or get around it actually leads to arguably less effective impacts in the end so we need to put it on the table so how implications so this is a piece of work we did with as part of the development and leadership program on gender and policy is that all programs are currently required to be doing basic political economy analysis before they start well do research programs do the same do they look at the political economy within which the institutions they're working with do they look at the questions that are being asked from a political economy well they could is would be my view secondly the issue of whose voices counts and that was brought up in Andrew's presentation whose voices counts also depends on what kind of mix you've got in a research team do research teams actually represent or are able to communicate and speak to the different kind of stakeholders in a system I don't know what it's doing and so how do we make sure that research teams and methodologies are cognizant of power relations and balance the voices of less powerful actors this is the oldest restaurant in Paris it was part of the scene of the enlightenment Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson plotted here together what's really important also then is how do we create the spaces, safe spaces for God these questions and these negotiations are safe spaces to happen too often we feel the research process doesn't set up those spaces doesn't actually bring those voices together in ways and the ways that are safe and sometimes brokering those relationships is really important framing we know a lot about the art of framing we know a lot of it in policy narratives this doesn't mean skewing the results of your research in order to make them politically palatable but it does mean being sensible about framing in ways that are more likely to get uptake and as Alex Evans in his great book the myth gap why evidence is often not always enough populism won't be beaten by spreadsheets so one has to engage at a level that is over and above the evidence in itself and how it's framed fifth and I think this book for those of you don't know by Justin Parkhurst on the politics of evidence from evidence and based policy to the good governance of evidence his argument is effectively if knowledge is contested if power relations are at play what do we do in other arenas we talk about the governance of those processes so who's involved how is it funded, what is the transparency of use because we're also saying a great deal of selectivity of use of evidence by our leaders and that needs to be called out and those processes get called out when good governance come into play I think he provides a useful kind of frame to think about these questions of good governance and use of evidence that I think is apposite so politics is often a blind spot and there are gaps in our understanding of how the politics of decision making plays out in institutions but we do have quite a lot of experience from political science but also from behavioral economics that we don't bring to bear on these questions of how institutional decision making happens and what I would suggest and what we suggest in the paper is that there are tried and tested tools for doing this stuff better and we should be incorporating them better too Before we go to Q&A just a few questions to draw some of the issues out first Chris, DLP is coming to its third phase so we have been able to learn a lot over time Can I draw you out on what the review found about the balance between taking a collaborative approach with policymakers versus the independence issue and how has that evolved over time? I think in the first phase of the LP there was a strong emphasis on developing the conceptual framework which is really important and then introducing new ideas with that and then subsequent to that focusing on bringing together empirical evidence which showed that those new ideas could actually make a difference in development programming and I think more recently there's been an emerging focus on how do you do this in practice what are some of the issues that are emerging as branches teams on the ground that make this happen Is that answering And Chris a little gobsmacked that politics matters as the headline Can you share an example without putting anyone on the spot about cases and cases where politics wasn't taken into account and mid-course corrections had to be made? Paper we've used quite a few examples from South Africa and issues that were made and I think what is very interesting in that case is the way that activists like the treatment action campaign actually had to draw down evidence from the international research community and use that in their struggle with a government that wasn't taken into account politics in some senses the government weren't taking into account the politics that were going on around them and they wouldn't have done what they did in terms of trying to do what they did on the WTO but the activists were using evidence in really interesting ways and I think it really begs an interesting question about the accessibility of research because activists are also users of evidence in reform campaigns of that time are we doing enough to make evidence available in ways that activists I think hasn't really answered your question but it is interesting around the quality. Andrea, can you give us some examples of knowledge-brokering in your work and what happens when the evidence is not particularly convenient in terms of how do you negotiate that? Yeah, thanks I think what we've found is that a lot of the research and evidence-gathering that we've done so far has really been to validate or support someone's pre-existing opinion or hunch it doesn't mean that at the end of the process there aren't new ideas or ideas that could refine but I think we're not at the point yet where there's been sort of open questions that would radically change the direction. Having said that though I think where we're seeing some success is bringing in different perspectives, different voices stakeholder perspectives in particular and I think the other thing that we're finding is that a piece of research or evidence may not get taken up and used by the person who commissioned it but there's other ways of brokering it into different spaces and different audiences who then themselves may draw on it in different ways. I don't know if that answers. That seems to be the last line of everyone. Melissa, you're an M&E practitioner. What advice can you provide on how research organisations can measure the impact of their research? Thank you, great question. I think there's the more obvious ways such as knowing when your publication is being referenced. That's an easy way to track academic research use but for the more applied research use that Andrea was referring to there it's a bit of a messier process of for example Andrea would be in a good position to do it because she's talking about taking findings from one project and turning it into advice that can then be applied to multiple partners and helping them to apply it so I would be enlisting her as a source of evidence of whether research findings had been used in a particular organisation. I'll try and think laterally about it. Yeah, I think that's it. We'll take some questions from the floor. Thank you so much. That was a really interesting group of presentations. My name is Sally. I'm from the Australian APEC Study Centre and we kind of fit under that model four that you were mentioning before, Melissa. One of the things I wanted to ask you was what are some great examples of, from your recommendations of communicating those research outcomes to a broader audience to make them more impactful? Take two more. I did see hands before. Just behind you. Oh, sorry. Thanks again for the panel. I'm interested in, I guess, how the politics of our last speaker influenced the hierarchies of knowledge that Andrea you mentioned. And when we're talking about evidence-based policy often we are talking about trials and quantitative measures and economics. How does that... How do you, I guess, drive demand for lived experience voice of communities, of users within this policymaking process? And if, I guess, if the people commissioning the research aren't interested is that something that you kind of push or do you just go with what they're after? Hi, thank you. My name's Sarah Webb. I'm an independent consultant and I do a lot of program design and also M&E work. And I was struck, Chris, you saw quite a lot of utilization and influence of DLP in design, but I think your expression was less in implementation of programs. And I find that really interesting and it concurs with my experience. But did you get any insights as to why that might be and possible ways to sort of advance with that in a more positive way? OK, we might... If you'd like to respond to that. And we'll take another round. Yes, I think it... I mean, it's not easy, but it's easier to get developmental leadership into the design process. Although the design processes themselves have to jump through a number of hoops and invariably the final design is different from the initial design put forward by consultants. But it does become much more complicated as you move into implementation. As designs are contracted out and you engage...managing contractors, you engage team leaders and you start to engage with implementing partners. There are just many more actors involved and obviously the influence of local context becomes much more important. So, yeah, often I found that developmental leadership tended sort of to evaporate as you move from design into implementation. In some cases but not all. In other cases, people were doing really amazing work despite a not very good design. So it can work the other way. But I think what's really important is, you know, engaging a local team who get it, who understand the local context, have the relationships with existing and emerging leaders who can create the spaces and the processes which enable those leaders to build coalitions and to drive change and have donors and managing contractors who are prepared to step back and let those local teams actually experiment, learn and adapt. And importantly having a team leader who actually understands the political economy of the local context who understands the political economy of the managing contractor and understands the political economy of DFAT and actually can manage across those, sort of protecting the team and the program whilst also sort of feeding the beast. So my question was about communicating to a broader audience. So I'll start with what we heard in our research from the target users in the development sector what they say they want looks more like synthesis of research findings synthesised all the way down to the pointy end of like a policy brief which is telling them there's this body of research out there. This credible person has looked at it and decided what to make of it and turned it into a pointy communication piece that they can refer to with confidence and gives them at least a starting point for when they're trying to implement some advice that they can trust. So that's what they ask for. The other thing that they say they rely on a lot is the trusted expert. So there's a very strong reliance on it. It doesn't come in the form of a brief in this case but it's the form of the person you can call to give you the brief that you trust to be across the research and to be able to interpret it for you and give you balanced credible advice on relying on the trusted expert but that is a strong preference of the organisations we spoke to. But I'd like to touch on a process that's quite a bit bigger and longer term as well. The slow development of ideas that enter the development sector often from other sectors and the example that came up in our research was about adaptive management. It's now hitting the development sector. I don't know if you all agree with me but it seems to be but it came from outside the sector and the ideas behind it have been developed for a long time. That is a very effective way of getting a new idea to a broader audience but there's no direct route in that over a very long period multiple papers have been done they probably weren't that user focused at the time to build up an idea that then can be turned into a current idea in the sector. What we heard through our research is that there's a little bit of a role there for research brokers to grab those ideas as their time comes and to pull together the evidence that sits behind them and turn them into a moment of change. Hopefully for the better. Professor Andrea. Question about moving away from marketing and quantitative evidence to businesses. Look it's a really good question because I think particularly the question about if there's no demand for different voices and different forms of evidence and ways of knowing do we push it or do we leave it the answer is that I often say we may have lost the battle but we'll win the war and I think we might find on individual pieces of work often the first time we're working with someone they'll hear us out and go yeah but I've got to write a strategy in three weeks so can you just synthesise existing evidence and research but then they often reflect and they'll come back to us and say hey you know how you were talking about maybe we could do a process where we do this but could we talk about that now and so I think what we've found over the two years and working closely and building those relationships and that trust is that being responsive to needs and understanding when someone has a deadline that they just need something for that something sometimes is better than nothing but it's also an opportunity to say to them there's also other things that we can do to help bring in knowledge and learning and I think a good example is one of the key pieces of research that we were meant to do annually is a governance update for P&G looking at the general sort of operating context of governance in P&G and what's changing and we had an idea to do sort of a participatory governance analysis alongside a more traditional sort of indicator based international measure and that was really difficult to communicate to people the value of that but first of all we decided that we'd bring in four Papua New Guineans from diverse backgrounds we had a former aid program and now market Mary small market seller a youth leader, a political advisor a policy researcher this kind of motley crew with years of experience and networks and ability to really tap in and understand people's lived experience of governance in P&G and to get people to you know we were sort of literally asked you know is there any value in bringing people like that in so yeah you know and then we had a limited number of conversations and again small M you know what can you really say out of that well we could say a lot you know a really deep rich contextual understanding and I think second time around now that we're back doing it sort of this year I think there's more acceptance of that and the benefit that can bring to higher level more quantitative assessment and Chris might have more to add I mean the only thing I think I'd add is that I mean and ACFID did a piece of work on this recently about multi-level demands for research and monitoring how you evaluate that and I think it was similar to research something called the big push forward which was looking at the politics of results and evidence and international development and the subtitle of the book was playing the game to change the rules in the sense that there is a very strong political pressure for aggregated simple clear results that say X and so that's clear that's not going to disappear shortly one suspect however I think the paradigm wars that over RCTs versus participatory method is really just still not a very helpful space at the moment and where the mixed methods is going in being able to track these things at multiple levels the recognition that the qualitative stuff is telling you something very important and very different but there are still indicators at a quant level that are useful for some things if they're not dominant but that's a political discussion on what forms of knowledge are valued and that's why it's important to have that discussion and I think the point you make about ideas is critical here because I think what you see is the pathways of successful research programs they're actually it's the drip drip drip of stuff over time that accumulates into I think it's Danny Roderick that calls interest congealed ideas so how do you decongel ideas and that's how you change interests and I think we talk a lot about interests but we don't talk enough about ideas another round of questions okay Sam Thanks Sam Chidick from the Asia Foundation in the Philippines maybe two questions if I can be cheeky one we're assuming that a lot of what we're talking about in terms of policy and influence is written and documented and it's true of the way a lot of discussion and commentary and debate is going on it's true on certain levels what's the best examples you've seen of those who've taken research and turned it into something which is more digestible or new digestible forms that translate that research into something which has an impact maybe I'll leave it there for that one and come back to the other one there Thanks very much this is Manny Jimenez from 3ie National Initiative for Impact Evaluation I just had a question maybe for the whole panel we might want to answer it we're always challenging research institutions to say how our research is being taken up I was wondering if you could talk about what are the right metrics that we might use to actually show that this has an influence and we have a what's the right story about and how we can get it to the research or something else Hi, Anna Giver from Van Watry Skills Partnership I'm really interested Andrea in your point about the fact that you do an annual governance update in PNG I'm just interested because how you've managed to navigate the potential political sensitivities of producing research and analysis of donors and working in Van Watry at the moment a lot of the research that we would really like to be produced and analysis would like to be delved into which is absolutely essential for achieving transformational development outcomes requires very honest and open analysis of political realities that I think would be very difficult for DFAT or if they talk about they're in cables between each other and not with implementing teams on the ground so I guess that's a long question just to say how have you navigated that and what do you think kind of further opportunities are maybe Saku if you could add something from your perspective I think I'll pass the mic over to Andrea look on the political sensitivities around things like the governance update that's been a key issue and one that sort of 12 months down the track we're still grappling with from the first time that we did it so I think a lot of it is how it's framed and brokered into different spaces not presenting things as sort of a single truth but a piece of the puzzle and encouraging debate and discussion around it so you know it's again more about the process and the relationships but we haven't cracked it well maybe I'll take Manny's question I mean Chris might want to speak to that question as well given the review but I think it's a tricky one right and I think that again whether it's the metrics I think what we've seen and certainly from our work with DLP is there is something about good case study process tracing work that actually captures the story of how change happens and who was involved in that sort of thing I think there's something that certainly we want to be doing in the next phase of DLP is probably looking at social network analysis allowing one to trace pathways of change better with different stakeholders and the good thing about the next phase of DLP3 we will be calling for a scholarship for a PhD student to accompany the whole of the phase for the next three years so if you know great PhD students who would like to do that for three years in collaboration with us at the Trayburn Birmingham University please let them know tweet now because I think that what we want to do is really delve into how this might be done in different ways and capture the stories of change and the processes that lie behind them as well as how ideas shift through institutions and how the questions of politics and context play out so I don't have an answer on metrics per se but I do think we need some more imaginative approaches to do some of this in the review I was looking at uptake across DFAT's entire program portfolio but using a sort of case study approach but I think you can look at what level of investment is going into programs which are influenced or demonstrate developmental leadership where are those programs emerging across regions and within regions are they emerging in particular sectors and then importantly looking at as Chris has said who is pushing these programs how many people sort of get this and how dense is this network of people as a really great indicator of where the change is likely to be sustained and then I think thirdly looking at is the evidence then being picked up in policy in guidelines, in tools is it actually being institutionalized so as well as getting that demand from below from people who get it you're also getting demand from above from managers who are now forced to do policy and guidelines and tools to actually insist that developmental leadership is taken up in program We all like that question about metrics and I have a probably a much simpler answer to that and the example I'd like to use I'm ex DFAT and ex AusAID so that's my history that I know best and over time I saw and other staff saw dramatic improvement in the number of conversations about gender equity and particularly at peer reviews so peer review of a design peer review of a equality report you could easily have used the quality of the conversation around gender equality as a metric of how well evidence about what matters for men and women in development programming is being used and there are certain people who went to all of those reviews and if you ask them year on year they could have told you it came up out of 10 in 20 we had a meaningful conversation about gender and here's how it landed so that's an example of a much simpler metric that could be used like a shorthand it doesn't give you as much depth as the case studies and really understanding how the ideas are penetrating and influencing and so apart from what you saw me do of turning a presentation into limericks which was great I was at the American Evaluation Association Conference this year which is a crazy event it's like 6,000 people and the rest of it but they actually did one of the plenaries was a one woman performance of a study on educational attainment amongst poor youth in Chicago I think it was extraordinary but as a piece of art that communicated the findings in a compelling way I mean half the room walked out what the hell is that and half the room said that is amazing we must do more of it so I don't know but it was certainly a controversial but or other exciting moment I thought I don't know if you want to do that now on Anna's question I think it requires a certain amount of cultural change and the only way we're going to get better at it is by doing it by having those difficult conversations and I think you know in some instances decisions have to be made so quickly but there is a vast body of knowledge out there from 70 years of development from 200 years of colonial rule you know there is a lot to be learnt about how spaces are governed how leadership forms and there is a lot of comparative evidence from outside the region so and you know there is always a tendency to think on the one hand every country is unique every context is unique and there is a lot of discussions that have been paying themselves out over time and you kind of need to have a discussion that brings the evidence of what we know and with the uniqueness of this current context and the demands of program implementation and you know Lisa Danny I'm going to put you on the spot Thank you I guess I've been sitting here a little bit pessimistically feeling like a lot of the research that I've been involved in with implementing partners and donors I feel like we're not too bad at achieving impact at sort of little course corrections on programs so informing I don't know maybe they're going to run a training program and you inform the curriculum so it's a bit better than it would have been or something else but I feel like we're not necessarily great at that more strategic level of saying actually are we doing the right thing in the aid program and should we be focusing on something entirely different so I feel like the research is sort of making some headway but maybe we're still not quite getting to those bigger strategic questions that's not really a question for me but I mean if anyone has any thoughts on how we can maybe bridge that and get to that particularly higher level I think would be useful Thanks, so Lisa was getting to part of my question which is again the generally optimistic review and we have these assumptions that the trajectory of change is kind of linear right and we're continually improving and I think within the development community there's lots of evidence on individual sectors and in different policy changes and different programming that that's true but on the macro level as we heard from Richard Moore yesterday there was a really strong critique of the strategic decisions that are being made and the way in which those strategic decisions are being informed by policy if we go back to or being informed by evidence and research if we go back to the decision which triggered the integration for example that was announced in the week before an election they didn't appear to be a whole lot of background to that it was a political manoeuvre largely achieved so I guess the question is are we seeing that connection between research on the things that matter connecting to policy decisions on the macro level or are we happy to contain ourselves within research connecting to policy on the more micro level things that we feel we can change and influence and I say that as someone who's generally optimistic about the trajectory of the things that we all work on but maybe a little less optimistic about the sort of political trajectory that dominates resource allocation and the big questions for how this our collective investments evolve Hi, thank you I'm Michael Wilson from Palladium I suppose the question is when DLP started off the prime consumers at least in terms of AusAid as the funders were self-selected development experts or building their expertise now you find yourself communicating with people who are part of the development community who didn't choose that career path that was delivered via the integration process so that's trying to make the products of research and the importance of evidence sexy for those who didn't choose a development career when they were starting out in DFAT what are some of the tools you can use what are some of the hooks the things that will draw people in I have a question I think that gets to the link between research and policy and I think picking up on the point earlier about selectivity or selectively applied evidence I think something that we sometimes see is that advocates can be quite good at translating policy into the framing and the political framing of the current ideological moment but then what we sometimes see is that the policy solution that gets implemented might use the evidence that we presented in terms of what the problem is quite a different policy solution that looks very different to what really the advocates and probably the research has had in mind so I'm wondering if any of the panelists have advice on how to help manage that transition through advocacy I'll throw the bulk of those questions clustered around this issue of the strategic level impact and playing in the arena of ideas I will throw that over to you Chris for first crack So there's one very obvious answer which is on the 12th and 13th of June at La Trobe we are hosting a two day conference on leadership and inclusive development which is part of the RDI network conference and we'll be having Dan Honig whose book Navigating by Judgement gets into I think some of the reasons why we are stuck in some of these spaces is that our strategy is very strongly that the autonomy, motivation and trust that front line staff and partners need to do development well is not there and so that would be nice and we'll have Fiammi Mataafa from Samoa who will be challenging I think Australia on its leadership in the region and we'll also have Shrilata Bhattiwala who's looking at feminist conceptions of leadership as a very different way of understanding leadership and power and how that connects and I think what I'm trying to there's not just a sell although a little bit is I think we need to be joining up the discussion right so yes there's this stuff internally within aid programs and incremental improvements there and that's good yeah but it's not joined up with these bigger questions and the questions that people like Pablo Yanguas have been asking in his book Aid or Jack Corbett's book on the politics of the history of aid and we're not joining up that conversation and I think that's part of the problem and we need to do that better I think the other thing is then which thanks to Michael's point how do you draw in others I mean I'd share the view we had this morning about the aid narrative being very tired I think the view that we're in this together and we need to learn collectively from each other that that applies whether you're a diplomat or anybody else and that how you therefore manage complex problems across groups with different interests is a common concern so I mean I just don't think we're perhaps framing it in ways that as you would say are kind of relevant to some of the some of the people we're trying to influence so I don't know that's a bit of a ramble but I think this narrative question is really really important if the ideas are going to shift but I do think some of the micro stuff and the voices of women in Papua New Guinea who are doing incredible stuff to create hybrid institutions for change that's got to be part of the story and not engaging with understanding that you can't tell a story without that I think I might just add a comment and I guess it's you know it's it's maybe a bit controversial but I think it goes to the world but I think it goes to Sam's question about you know are we doing research on the things that matter or research on the things we can influence and a little bit about sort of Lisa's comment and you know I think it's fair to say that in P&G we haven't yet managed to create an authorizing environment for doing research on the things that matter I think there's there's interest from a lot of different stakeholders but there's no there's sort of a lack of a governance structure that sits at a level that wants to ask those bigger questions and you know when I sort of reflect on why we're stuck at this sort of nitty-gritty detail for sort of course corrections rather than sort of bigger picture questions it's partly because there's no one playing a role at the moment that is interested in understanding those bigger questions no one willing to fund it no one willing to champion or drive it no one willing to you know take the risk because of the potential sensitivities so I think that's a real sort of opportunity to see what work we can do to try and sort of move closer to that and again you know this concept of playing the game to change the rules I think being in there and building the relationships and the trust and exposing people slowly little by little to new ways of doing things bringing in different forms of knowledge looking at different ways of communicating and sharing knowledge I think I think that does hold potential but it is slow yep I'm interested in the review and with many of the people that I spoke to talked about pre-integration post-integration I mean DLP emerged at a point when there was bipartisan support for aid the aid budget was growing and growing quite rapidly and the aid was reimagining itself as a development agency not just as an aid agency transferring buckets of money from here to there it was recruiting development expertise from DFID elsewhere it was valuing development expertise and at that point there was you know a lot of it seemed quite a lot of energy and new programs emerging and then integration happened DFAT for a variety of reasons the remaining development expertise was spread very thinly there were people with oversight of programs without development expertise and there seemed to be a dip in the programs which were taking on developmental leadership but at the same time there has particularly in the last couple of years I think there has been some at least in program terms the new programs emerging use things like the policy on innovation the policy on gender the policy on governance to try and re-instill an interest in new ways of thinking and doing development but I don't think it's anything like what it was pre-integration I'd like to respond to a bit of a theme I detected in the last round of questions so we heard a little bit about making sure that we're focusing on the things that really matter the big picture that we're checking that the evidence that's generated is actually used even though it's sort of cited is the policy of programming actually consistent with what was found and can we interest people who might not necessarily have come to their role with an interest in evidence based policy of programming and the theme I think I'm hearing there are some things that they don't necessarily want to do it's hard it might involve really bad news there's not very good intrinsic incentives to ask those hard questions and it's only part of the answer but this is my work so that's where I'm coming from I think evaluation is another hook on how to motivate people to look at some of the harder questions that they otherwise might struggle to dedicate time and focus to and luckily enough it is kind of built into most organisations accountability settings that anything that's a significant policy or program at some point at least is exposed to evaluation there are limitations on sort of how far you can encourage a client to push what they're getting back out of an evaluation but for evaluations that are more summative in nature I think hearing that what you thought you were doing is not what you were doing or what you thought you were doing didn't work is a really strong stick to refocus attention on what it was that you were actually doing and whether that should be what you do in the future so it's not a total answer but it's another lever that can be used Thanks Melissa we've come to time I think Andrew you touched upon something in terms of building relationships trust that relationship capital is what might there may be a moment where your knowledge is called upon where your networks and access to that knowledge is called upon and that's when you have an opportunity to really impact and you have to basically stay in it for the long time for those opportunities and I do think again to come back to a theme we need to pitch this at the level of ideas the developmental leadership program is about leadership in developing countries that should be the front and centre of a department of foreign affairs interests so you're onto something that is totally there for the picking it's about how do we position this program and it's ideas to be useful in the context of that discussion so on that note I'd like you to join me in thanking the panelists today