 to elders past and present from this country and all lands in which participants are joining today. Also to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander participants in this event. We all, NCP partners and NCP community to the fourth session of the NCP momentum 2021. We're looking at shaping stronger future together and co-hosted by DFAT today and XP. The momentum seminar series continues to provide an opportunity for scholars and alumni to learn and collaborate with a wide variety of practitioners and thought leaders, particularly while this challenging period that we're all living through. So it's pleased to be able to all meeting you virtually. Do hope one day, it's not too far away to be able to speak to you face to face. But for now, we'll have to continue to press on with this. We're certainly keen to make sure that this helps to share knowledge and benefits to the program and the participants. And in it, we've already seen a number of alumni offered graduate training and employment opportunities as an outcome of the networks and collaboration from last year's series. And we're keen to continue that this year. Throughout the program, NCP relies on the close connections that we can forge between the private and NGO sectors to offer practical experience, professional experience, and things that can leverage off you who've been so active in the NCP program. We certainly appreciate in particular our partners and our sponsors and the private sector partners that we've got here today. I'm really grateful today, particularly to have Peter Botten, ACOBE, foundation of in the chair of oil search foundation. If some of you may know, Peter spent the better part of 28 years with oil search, working in PNG before retiring in August, 2020. And he's got a truly and deep connection to the region. His commitment to funding and support major developments in project and PNG is well recognized. And he's a true champion of DFAT and I've had the pleasure of working with and knowing Peter for a number of years and his company. In a particular example, I think where his best testament to the commitments when PNG was severely impacted by the earthquake on 26 February 2018, Peter and his team played a key role in supporting PNG communities recover. I also want to thank Dr. Dan Evans, founder of XP today with the experts of the panel who'll be with us and talking through out of position Australia by 2020 as a leader of transformational cross-sector development partnerships in the region. And we hope that this engagement today will lead to increased development in fact and be interest to you all. Sincere thanks also to the other panel members, Sabina Kuratollo, acting CEO of Impact Investing Australia, Morgana Ryan, chair of innovation info exchange and connecting out Brendan Allen from the Burnett Institute, Julie Rosenberg, executive officer from Australian international development network, Karen James, CEO of business for development and Shannon Schultz and CP scholar and XP research assistant. Today's session is particularly relevant to the question and the consideration related to the Asia Pacific and the development challenges and one that's occupying many people's minds in particular my own at DFAT. For me, collaboration with the private sector and the NGO communities been key to success certainly in a number of places where I've had the pleasure to work in the Philippines and the Pacific and into Southeast Asia. One of my lessons is certainly is that partnerships are key and we have to invest in them and that it's important to learn and understand perspectives of both the private and NGO sector but we really need to take time to invest in each other and indeed learn from the lessons of the partners that we're working with on the ground in the host countries. So I look forward to myself learning some things today and we'll hand over to Shannon to take us through and get into the session. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Shannon Schultz and I'm delighted to be joining you today from Melbourne on the land of the Kulin Nation and I pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging. I'm a 2020 New Colombo Plan Scholar, GHD sponsored scholar and the Cook Islands Fellow from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. I've been a pro boner research assistant with the Cross Sector Partnership Initiative or XPI since the start of 2021. I'm so excited to be facilitating today's momentum session brought to you by the New Colombo Plan and XPI entitled Creating a Team Australia Approach to Asia Pacific Fellow. I feel privileged to be in the company of the incredible panelists joining us tonight. It is thanks to the business champions like Peter Botten that the NCP is the global program that it is. Before we begin, let me tell you a little bit about the working relationship that I developed with XPI which has resulted in a highly rewarding learning experience that extended my New Colombo Plan scholarship, developed my professional skills and helped me understand Australia's strategic role in Asia Pacific development. The top three benefits I derived included real time exposure and collaboration with a group of Australia's leaders from XPIs five key sectors, business, government, private capital, NGO, academia and medical research. Secondly, I was able to improve my analytical and project management skills by conducting research and analysis with oversight from XPI leaders who have a strong management consulting background, primarily X Accenture. And thirdly, I deepened my presentation skills through the opportunity to deliver the research results to XPI Steering Committee at their quarterly meetings. The pathways that have been open to me through the New Colombo Plan and XPI have been invaluable in creating multidisciplinary links and learnings to help me secure my new position as a consultant at the world's largest PurePlay Sustainability Consulting firm, Environmental Resource Management. I will apply these analytical skills in this new role focused on the digital transformation of environment, health, safety, energy and climate change solutions, all of which play a vital role in securing livelihoods across Asia Pacific region. The value I added to XPI was to provide a critical stakeholder mapping which defines some 170 Australian business entities in active development partnerships across 19 Asia Pacific countries. This was one essential component to underpin their decision to select Papua New Guinea, Bangladesh and Indonesia to develop proof of concept pilot projects. Now XPI is practically looking to deliver projects in these countries and create a Team Australia approach to development in the Asia Pacific region with some of Australia's leaders in their respective sectors. I would encourage other current and alumni New Colombo Plan scholars to consider contributing from research capacity to XPI to support this important research agenda. And I look forward to hearing from the panelists on their insights into cross-sector partnerships and some of their own incredible work in the region. I will now pass over to Dr. Dan Evans, the chair of XPI to provide an overview of the structure and the chair of the discussion before I return to moderate the Q&A. Please send me your questions via the Q&A function throughout the discussion. We'll endeavor to answer them during question time. Thank you so much for joining us and over to you, Dan. Now that's our strong appreciation for this valued opportunity to introduce ourselves to NCP scholars, DFAT, and others interested in Asia Pacific development. In particular, my thanks go to Brian Burgona, NCP's secretariat, introduced to us by Andrew Parker, PWC Asia Practice Lead, also a BCA Asia Task Force leadership group member who was key in delivering its recent very important second chance report, which proposes a Team Australia approach. We appreciate Andrew's serving on our advisory council as a business sector representative. Our own adoption of BCA's Team Australia terminology is unapologetic as it perfectly fits our cross-sector approach. Our use of the term Team Australia is constant and no way diminishes the role of in-country partners. Obviously essential to define and deliver successful development projects and programs. My first key role today is to overview XBI, specifically to provide insights into three key themes. Firstly, who and what we are, and equally importantly, what we are not. Next, what's our potential value add to Australia's existing development approach? And lastly, how will we measure our effectiveness and impact? XBI is best characterized using our four Cs. We're a coalition, a catalyst, a convener and a collaborator. Very critically, XBI itself is neither a project funder nor a project manager. Our 50 strong organizational structure comprises 22 member advisory council and a 28 member expert network, which is still expanding. Each one has very strong Asia Pacific experience in development and our business. We believe this XBI talent pool spread across our five stakeholder sectors is unique in Australia. We define the sectors as business, NGO and not-for-profits, government, philanthropy and private capital, and also most importantly, Australia's world-class academia health medical research sector. The council's primary function is to provide strategic oversight for XBI. Its deepest country expertise is in PNG, which when adding our expert network members totals 30 of the 50 or 60%, all of whom have very strong in-country experience spanning the different five sectors. Importantly, each council member has a dual function representing both their own parent entity and uniquely also the broader sector each entity belongs to. Today, four of our sectors are represented. XBI has a small steering committee comprising both advisory council and expert network members, which both coordinates and provides governance oversight for XBI. XBI is not an NGO, rather we're an initiative whose simple purpose is to break down the silos between our five sectors which contribute to international development. Why? We believe Australia can both create leverage and also increase its development impact. This should then also justify increased donor confidence and related funding. All parts of XBI serve pro bono with a single exception of our part-time project director who is currently funded by two family philanthropic foundations and Melbourne Business School. Most critically, we were absolutely indebted to Business for Development, B4D, for providing all business support services on an in-kind basis. Let's now briefly consider what XBI's potential value add is. Our just stated premise is that by modifying Australia's current approach, untapped potential exists through a synergistic combination of first, mobilizing increased Australian business sector participation, ideally ensuring each of their overseas operations has a well-developed, clearly articulated social development strategy integrated into its operations. Second, by creating specific partnerships between stakeholders from elements across our five sectors to ensure the right fit-for-purpose consortium combining expertise, experience, funding, and partner commitments, which reflect effective, separate value propositions. Thirdly, by capitalizing on Australia's latent capacity and passion which exists within a very strong under or unutilized development talent pool which XBI has unwittingly discovered. And lastly, by consistently achieving a promised impact, this was thus increasing partner and donor confidence and hopefully related funding levels. The final topic I'll briefly cover now is how we'll measure our own impact. XBI has defined its regional scope as 19 Asia-Pacific countries, five in Melanesia, eight in Southeast Asia, and six in South Asia. With short-term research support from local business school, Global Health Alliance, and a new Colombo Plan Scholar, yep, thanks, Anand. We map the country presence of about 170 Australian entities from across our five sectors in all 19 countries. We believe this represents the unique approach within Australia. Importantly, we searched on which entities had cross-sector partnerships, particularly including an Australian business. Why? Because we believe these businesses are self-defined development leaders and most prospective potential business partners for us to engulf with. We also developed a set of indicative partnership guidelines which encourages the Australian and host country project partners to create their own governing MOU, agree a theory of change, and related international partnership framework, to operate on an open book financial basis, and will necessarily agree how to jointly secure project funding. Given our 18-month timeframe, our advisory council strongly encouraged us to quickly focus on countries where we had natural advantages, particularly ex-buy expertise and in-country relationships. Consequently, we prioritized one country in each region, namely P&G, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, and created a working group for each, comprising a mixed advisory council and expert network members, to identify, facilitate, and support the initiation of at least two proof-of-concept partnership pilot projects in each priority country by December. These working groups are each extremely keen to strengthen collaboration with the DFAP posts in Port Moresby, Jakarta, and DACA to assist identifying potential pilot projects. While it's still too early for ex-buy to discuss any potential pilot project leads, each working group is quietly confident that our initial efforts are well-directed towards building long-term relationships in host countries to create platforms from which important opportunities should emerge. We're particularly encouraged to announce today that ex-buy is executing an opportunity definition MOU with BRAC, Australia, sorry, Bangladesh's and possibly the world's largest NGO. We fully anticipate one key focus will be gender lens social development projects. BRAC advises us this MOU represents its first with any Australian entity other than DFAT, regardless of which stakeholder sector. Ex-buy is sincerely grateful to Melissa Park, former minister for international development and current BRAC governing body member for her introduction to BRAC CEO. Hopefully that's enough ex-buy context for now for to set this session up, which is designed to explore what we currently understand about the challenges of cross sector partnerships. Now a quick introduction to our speaker. First, Peter Botten, former oil search CEO and New Colombo Plan Business Champion will provide a short case study on oil searches P&G social development partnerships. At the risk of embarrassing Peter, his development leadership is widely recognized as the business sector's gold standard in P&G. Apologies, Peter. Other speakers today have already been introduced by Matt, so I thank you for that Matt. One of our plan speakers, Brendan Allen, Executive General Manager of Partnerships and Business Development, Burnett Institute is a late withdrawal due to illness and we wish him a speedy recovery. I requested Liza Garcia, our project director to join our panel for the Q&A session. Liza works closely with the UN Australia Association and also consults for Development Partnerships Institute, EPI Mining. We've defined six priority development partnership questions for our speakers to provide some of their insights on. Channel then moderate the Q&A session, which will include the full ex-buy team present today. So don't forget to lodge questions in the Q&A function. Thanks for your attention. Over to you, Peter. Thank you, Matt, Shannon and Dan and may I ask for the pleasure to participate in this important session this afternoon, highlighting the need for new thinking on partnerships to effectively address a Team Australia approach to the Asia Pacific, to Asia Pacific development. My message to you is that the private sector should be regarded as a key partner along with more traditional stakeholders such as bilaterals, multilateral organization and not prefer profits to deliver creative and sustainable solutions to social development challenges in our region. And today I'll speak specifically about Papua New Guinea. Many government organizations when addressing aid programs tend to focus on traditional actors such as the bilaterals, multilaterals and international NGOs to deliver their programs. I firmly believe that more effective and sustainable programs can be delivered when right-minded private sector entities are engaged in these development partnerships. To do this, we need to move past the prevalent suspicions on all sides and develop new ways of partnering, including all of the actors and stakeholders mentioned above and including the private sector. There is unfortunately a pervasive ignorance of how the private sector is now approaching social development challenges. Attitudes are changing in many organizations on how they wish to participate in development challenges, especially in places such as P&G. Business does bring substantial capital and capital investments. Business provides jobs and substantial training. Business can influence society by empowering women addressing health issues of their staff, such as malaria, TB, HIV and now COVID, that threaten their workforce and their families, as well as promoting changes in attitudes and behaviors through the company's value system. The private sector is incentivized to work with agility and speed and can often deliver development results quicker than governments and donors. And this is especially true on the ground in P&G. An example which Matt spoke of was shown during the tragic 2018 earthquake in P&G where the private sector, as estimated by the UN, delivered around 80% of all food aid into remote villages in the first month following the earthquake. This was done with innovative partnerships between the private sector, with the private sector delivering people, equipment, supply, chain and security on the ground, working with governments and bilaterals, multilaterals and NGOs, getting past misunderstandings and suspicions to deliver life-saving outcomes under very challenging circumstances. Another example is the partnership between governments and the private sector to support and improve health services in Heller and Southern Highland provinces in P&G. These two remote provinces are challenged by ongoing tribal conflicts and very difficult service delivery environment. Partners in this process have set common goals and measure achievements against the P&G medium-term development strategy working within the government system and framework. Funding and other support has been secured from over 10 different government and private sector entities. And I'm pleased to say that DFAT is one of the supporters of our work in both Southern Highlands and in Heller. Measure results have demonstrated significant improvements in health outcomes, including vaccination mates, attended child births, there is child and maternal health issues, addressing the scourge of family sexual violence, providing medical, mental health and legal support for victims, as well as provision of fit-for-purpose infrastructure, water, electricity and sustainable servicing of infrastructure across the two provinces. Help and support is also provided within the government system and provides governance structures for effective board financial management across the two PHAs to deliver a sustainable system and a sustainable enhancement in the government system, a challenge that has been on the books of so many entities for so long. This process is so important in endeavoring to manage now the impact of COVID. Support for the PHAs to address the pandemic is now core to partner response and we hope to play a major role in providing efficient vaccine rollout across our provinces and other complex and challenging tasks given societal sensitivities and logistics challenges, ones that the private sector is uniquely placed to help. In finishing, there are real opportunities, especially in P&G, for innovative approaches to private public partnerships that could transform sectors such as agriculture that employ many while addressing social issues such as conflict prevention, empowering women, addressing the youth bulge in Papua New Guinea and preventing disease. There was a real opportunity to build the next generation of P&G leaders, a long-term solution to deliver a responsible change. We can do so much more if we can work together. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. I much appreciated your first-hand experience in P&G as obviously very, very highly respected. So now we're going to move to these questions that we've framed for our own sort of advisory council members to speak to. The first question is, what's compelling about a cross-sector partnership approach to international development? Sabina is going to speak to this first and then Karen will pick it up and add her insights as well. So, Sabina, across to you, thanks. Thanks, Ken. So cross-sector partnerships are not new in international development. And as Peter noted, the need for these types of partnerships is only heightened in our response to and recovery from the COVID pandemic. And partnerships can be local, regional or global. So the sustainable development goals or SDGs, which are global goals to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all, they're a global demonstration of a cross-sector development effort. The SDGs recognize that what is one of the key drivers of cross-sectoral development partnerships is that the need to address complex social and environmental problems do not respect human-made borders. And they're too large or intractable for one organization or sector to tackle alone. And they also recognize that no one actor has all the answers or the resources. So what's compelling about these types of collaborations is that they draw upon multidisciplinary skills, know-how and resources to address these complex and seemingly intractable challenges. And I will have a bit more to say about that shortly. But for now, over to you, Karen, for your insights. Ray, that there is a uniting framework that brings us all together to solve the complex social issues that they're addressing. And from our perspective, why is a cross-sector partnership compelling to solve these issues is that they don't just connect interested parties, but they enable them to act with collective agency. And together, when you get a cohort of interested parties connected and enabled for action, we believe they can influence a range of outcomes beyond what the individual organizations might have been able to do on their own. But important to note is that if the cross-sector partnerships are not coming together with a shared purpose, vision, and measures of success, they're not gonna achieve the outcomes and they could end up causing unintended adverse outcomes. So there's a lot of information about development and aid. And as Sabina said, these are not new concepts. And I believe that partnerships have to be founded on trust and connection. And that without that, no cross-sector partnership could be successful. And you create the energy between people and you have everybody in that relationship heard and seen there's no judgment. Everyone's cultural nuances are respected. And when you do that, you get this high performing partnership that is able to work together on a foundation of shared values. And we believe that BFD, that when you connect that headspace that's that complex understanding and putting together the right frameworks with that heart of partnership that you can really achieve incredible change and incredible outcomes. Thanks very much for that, Karen. Okay, so the next question I wanna go to is what has Australia's experience been in cross-sector development partnerships? Morgana's gonna speak to this and she's also gonna talk about which countries she considers the global leaders and what are some of the key lessons. So Morgana? Thanks Dan, and thank you for inviting me to speak today. I've been very fortunate to spend my career in a hybrid between commercial business, management, consulting, but also 10 years working in international development with some of the best international NGOs. So I've seen partnership at many different levels. And I actually want to start today with a few comments around when we talk about global leaders or best practice. One of my frustrations in development is how often we try and reinvent the wheel. And so I would really like to share some resources with the participants on this call today. And challenge all of you when you're thinking about your role as part of the New Colombo Plan and if you're thinking about this partnership space to not try and reinvent the wheel and go to the gurus. And the gurus that I would direct you towards are the Partnering Initiative, TPI and Partnership Brokers Association, PBA. These are the two important standards globally around how to build partnerships, how to make partnerships work effectively. And they have some amazing resources around toolkits and guides for how to work well together. DFAT itself in recent years has run the business partnership platform which now has some great case studies of organizations working together in partnership for impact in Asia. There's also other organizations like the UN Global Compact and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and UNIS Business. All of these are organizations that are looking at these really complex development issues and how you bring different players together to have an impact. But at the same time, there's also been an emergence of a number of groups, particularly out of Africa, challenging the way the development is done. For example, No White Saviors in Uganda, Digan Ali, who's a long-term community-centered development lead out of Kenya. And they're really challenging us to look at models that they're seeing as more colonial and historical, development in a different way. So in a minute, when I talk about some case studies, I am gonna really refer back to the importance of partnerships that are seeded in a deep understanding of a challenge in a community, in a place and designing a way of bringing additional resources to amplify the solutions to those problems. And that is the beauty of partnerships. I'd also like to very quickly refer to a piece of work, it's quite old now. Accenture Business for Development and then Ozade, now DeepFat, worked together in 2012 to do the business and development study. There was a survey of over 100 businesses and DeepDive interviewed with CEOs and executives of another 30 businesses. That research had some really strong themes around why businesses engage in partnerships. And I think they're as relevant today as they were then. So 93% of respondents to the survey agreed that business does have a role in alleviating poverty. Employment, education, infrastructure and health were the primary areas where they felt business could really make a substantial impact. And why a business is motivated to do that? Brand trust and reputation is a big one. Employee engagement and also potential future employees of the organization and personal motivation. And this is where I think people like Paul Coleman, the former CEO of Unilever and Peter Botten are real leaders in this space because it's CEOs and executives who have a passion and who have an understanding about why caring about society also is good business. And there's an increasing amount of literature talking about why Milton Franklin has drawn the sole role of the companies to maximize shareholder value is no longer the best way for organizations to operate. So I just want to very quickly draw on two examples. One is a very, very international example and one is a very Australian example just to really highlight some of the themes around what does good look like and why do partnerships sometimes struggle? So the first one is a global example that was a combination of five players. There was a United Nations agency. There were two fast moving consumer goods company. There was a nutrition company and there was an international NGO. And they came together in New York in September which is a very busy time for various UN in the old days, Clinton Global Initiative and other big meetings. And they had a huge announcement about this program or the five year program with a focus on child nutrition. Now the vision was fantastic. The challenge in the partnership came into the details and this is one of the issues I think around having a global commitment but being able to really think about how it plays out on the ground. And in the end it worked well but it took them a while to get over some of those challenges. And one of the most basic challenges was everybody agreed around a vision of we're going to tackle child malnutrition. Problem was that for the UN agency and for the international NGO, a child and child malnutrition was the first 1,000 days. But for the businesses, child was anything up to 9, 10, 11 years old. Now both groups of entities had reason for why they had to find a child in that way but it meant that what they thought was a common vision was actually quite divergent. And getting that discussion out on the table early, understanding those differences was really important. And it was really important for the partners to respect why they were coming from different angles and to find a common ground that still allowed the partnership to have its reach and its impact while meeting the needs of the partners. The other major challenge is that partnerships have been kind of rooted in international headquarters level. Ultimately, implementation was the responsibility of the regional and country level entities, which were a completely different set of stakeholders. And you can imagine five partners, two countries, regional offices, country offices, headquarters, that is a lot of stakeholders. And it took quite a while in that partnership to get the governance together. So these are just things to think about practically when you're pulling a partnership together. The other one I'd like to speak to is closer to my heart. It's not truly an international development example, but it is absolutely a social justice, social impact story. And it's based on a product called Ask Izzy. So if you Google Ask Izzy, you'll find it's a website that's designed for people experiencing homelessness and intrinsic advantage to find access to services. The reason why this was such an effective partnership is because you have the social enterprise or the not-for-profit who has long trouble working with homelessness. They said on a huge database of services that they knew all the places that homeless people could get help. And they also knew that even though people were homeless, they still had mobile phones. And they were able to convince Google and real estate Australia group that it would be a really good idea in investing and working together as a team to make the Ask Izzy website to take all this information and put it directly into the hands of those people in need. And then they managed to convince Telstra to come on board and Telstra committed to providing access to that website on me, which basically means if you're living on the street, you've got a mobile phone but you don't have any credit on your mobile phone, you can still access this website and you can find out where to get a meal, legal support, shower, housing, et cetera. So in reflecting on those two examples and my top kind of three to four things around what does it look like, there's definitely the importance that the idea is grounded in real understanding and knowledge of the problem and some innovative thinking about how to tackle it and a recognition that each of the partners is something that helps amplify the ability to tackle the problem or be aware of organizational complexity in partnership. And if you're gonna agree things at a headquarters level, please make sure that you've got all your stakeholders within your own organization on board and committed before we start to engage others. Maybe she was pretty, Peter Botten just talked about the right mindset. I can't emphasize that enough. I spent quite a bit of time in the UK working in international partnership space. I've seen it back here in Australia. It's the leaders who have a vision and have a passion for this that make a difference and I would love to throw a question to Peter maybe for the Q and A later to just get his views on when he talks to other leaders, has he seen any trends or characteristics that kind of drive which leaders care about this and which one motivates them? Because I think this is a really key trend in business to come to the party. And the last thing is honesty. All partners are in it for a reason. They're not always aligned but there needs to be an overlapping intersection that Venn diagram. And I think it's okay to be honest about why you're there even if it doesn't fully align with your other partners. And when you design the KPIs for a program everyone gets really excited about the KPI round. Okay, we're tackling child and malnutrition. What are I going to tell them if we're doing good or not? But I still have KPIs for the other participants as well because any one partner is not getting what they need out of that partnership. There's no reason for them to stay in the partnership falls apart. We really do need those KPIs on both levels. KPIs for the overall partnership but KPIs for each partner in the partnership. So in conclusion, I'm excited about what the cross-sector partner is going to bring, particularly the fact that we've focused down on three countries and we're looking to work really closely with stakeholders in those countries because I think the opportunity for the five sectors from Australia to help answer is very exciting. But again, it's finding those players like BRAC within countries really have a deep understanding of where they might need help and then how that can play out. Thank you. Thanks very much, Morgana. Really appreciate that. Okay, we're going to move on to our next question. What experience if any do you personally have in cross-sector partnerships and can you quickly describe a relevant cross-sector partnership project you've worked on? We're going to ask first Karen and then Sabina to speak to this. Karen? Credit program with Business for Development in Papua New Guinea. So in the organization that I lead, we get the opportunity to both work on the business and in the business. So I have quite a hands-on role in our community peagry enterprise program in Papua New Guinea that was started by oil search. So we started with the idea of could there be an agriculture and a peagry program in the Hella province where the stock feed and the pigs are all manufactured and reared in the province. And that was proven a number of years ago and then the earthquake and some security issues impacted us and we were delayed. But we now have the program in full force and I participate in that as a leader on the team with Wonderland Agri Stop Limited which is a company formed by five landowners plus oil search. And we've been building the program throughout the COVID situation. Of course, practicing all of the safety requirements that we need, but we have been able to maintain momentum which we're all very happy with. And so we've got almost 2,000 farmers signed up in the Hella province. We've got 13 model farms established and of those 1,915 odd farmers, 75% of them are women. And this is going to create both a commercial and a community enterprise where over 850 people in the community are economically impacted. The program is both an agriculture and a husbandry and animal husbandry program. And it's going to address one of the key problems around economic instability and malnutrition. And I think probably one of the highlights for me of the work is the collaboration and the teamwork we have. And it's founded very much to Morgana's point on honesty and that honesty creates trust and that trust results in us having the momentum to even in a COVID world to keep things moving and progressing. We're now in phase two. So we're just in the process of negotiating the land for the pigory. And our hero metric to date is that by June, we're anticipating that we'll have enough plants and tubers to actually create 270 tons of stock feed where our forecast was 60. So we're going to be achieving for times our forecast. And it's an absolute pleasure to be working on the program. Thank you, Dan. Sabina. Thanks. So I'm privileged to be part of what's described by Harvard as a bold global experiment in cross sector collaboration. And this is known as the global steering group for impact investment or GSG. So the GSG is a global body of more than 33 member countries with 17 more countries or regions preparing to join. And it started from a social impact investing task force of the G7 in 2013. And since then it's been driving towards its mission to build the market for investments which deliver both a measurable social or environmental outcome with a financial return. So I mentioned the STGs before. It's well accepted that philanthropy and government alone can't meet the challenges of delivering those STGs. So the private sector has an important role to play. And so do other actors such as civil society and academia. And the GSG brings all of these actors together globally. So each member country has its own National Advisory Board or NAB as they know. And NAB themselves are comprised of a range of local leaders and business leaders from business, government, philanthropy, civil society, universities and all of these people are working towards driving the for-purpose market for social impact within their own countries. NABs are themselves cross-sectoral collaborations and they too are underpinned by further such collaborations which result in the impact investments themselves. So these powerful change agents for developing and developed impact economies benefit people and planet and they've demonstrated their potential to unlock new sources of impact capital and develop national impact infrastructure and policies. So globally the market has grown to more than a trillion Australian dollars according to the Global Impact Investment Network or the GIN and in Australia the Responsible Investment Association of Australia or RIA reports that Australia's impact investing market has more than tripled over the past two years to almost 20 billion dollars. Thanks, Dan. Yeah, thanks very much, both of you. Okay, let's now look at some of the bigger challenges. So the question that I'm going to ask of Julie is what are the most difficult impediments to effective cross-sector development partnerships? Julie? Julie was struggling to unmute herself even though she was told not to unmute herself. Thanks for listening. What are some of the, first of all, I will say that the Australian International Development Network is, it has the simple mission of increasing flows out of Australia to developing countries in need. Cross-sector partnerships, or XBI, as it's called, has the value proposition that cross-sector partnerships are underutilised tool that could actually accelerate those flows. And that's why there's a kind of natural fit for us to work together, starting from the collaboration. We've heard from Peter Botten on the value of business, engagement and delivering a social agenda. We've seen great collaborations in crisis. And there's no doubt the landscape is changing. And I mean, that is so cool, Sabina, to hear that it has increased to 20 billion in the last two years. The impact investing market, because Australia has been lagging a bit, so it's changing. And that's cool, and it gives hope. The stuff that I think and that I've experienced that actually slows it down, or kind of the hurdles that need to be dodged, the first one, the major one, would be trust, basically. And then there's so many sort of issues that fall out under that, when you unpack what trust really looks like. And the first of all, huge one is language. Everybody, each of these sectors, have developed their own shorthand because they like to move with speed and be really cool. And so there's a whole heap of acronyms. And that combined with the general desire of everybody not to look foolish, stops people going, hey, what are you talking about? So there needs to be an intention to actually work together and really slow the process down a bit. And that would come to the second major hurdle that I think, and it is time frames. Business have quarterly reporting cycles. When cash is good, they're keen to engage, let's say when it's not so good. So you actually need some time to build those programs into the business, find the shared value, so that it doesn't get cut when the cash disappears. And really long programs around social change take so much longer. This idea of teaching someone to fish, yeah, awesome. But it takes a lot longer than anybody expects. I've just been up to Alice Springs, not an international development example, but I've been up in Alice Springs working with Children's Ground. They're doing an empowerment piece on this nation. 25 years is their... That's what they're doing. They're going to be there for 25 years. And then after that 25 years, they're going to do another 25 years. 25 years is how long they estimate it will take for social change. That's a long time for business to commit. And for government to commit as well. We're all on different cycles. And that, I think, is one of the biggest hurdles as well. Together with common networks, we've sat in meetings going, why don't the NGOs come and talk to us at business? And there's been attempts many times. And I don't want to be negative about it because there actually are huge examples of moving forward. And we're doing all these things. But I've been asked to speak to the ones that I think slow it down. And it's about trust and totally agree. As Ajay said, honesty is a massive part of trust. And sometimes it's really difficult for NGOs or even business to actually be honest and articulate what the real objective is. So that also slows it down. I think that's probably enough for me, unless anyone else can think to add. OK, no, that's good, Julie. No, thanks very much for that. That's very, very insightful. So our last question that we've set up as being a key question for our group is what are some of the predictive criteria to assess who are most likely to be effective partners and related elements to create ethical, sustainable cross-sector partnerships? Karen and then Sabina are going to address this briefly before we go to Q&A. OK, Karen? Have very related answers because they're the common threads that determine whether things are going to be successful or not. So when you look at this question, anything to do with ethics and sustainability, for me, always starts with the first predictive criteria and that everyone involved needs to legitimately care. And the partners have to genuinely care about the community, the work, and the changes they are making commitment to. And they have to be committed to play a long game in this kind of work. To Julie's point, there is no ticking the box, greenwashing one-year program in international development. You've got to be in it for the long haul and you have to be committed and care. And I think I spoke earlier about shared purpose vision and measures of success. I think they're very, very critical. And also, at the start, having a shared definition of what the problem is you're solving for a common analysis of that problem and frameworks that are going to be used for planning but are going to have the agility to navigate the bumps in the road because there will be bumps in the road. And then from all of that foundation, then you can put the type of governance and project documentation, things you need in place to actually resolve complex or intractable issues, seemingly intractable. And I always like to look at complex systems. I'm an engineer by trade. So I think like an engineer, and I like to create inputs and outputs. And I think the easiest way is to think like you're baking a cake. And if you were going to bake a cake, one of the most important ingredients you'd put in it was executive endorsement and leadership. What I found in my two plus years at D4D is when we have executive endorsement and strong leadership programs work and when we don't have that, they fail in the private sector, in the business sector. You've got to have financial backing. You've got to have the ability to actually do the work. You've got to have an impact-oriented approach. I think you have to have a strong operating cadence that everyone in the program commits to. It creates a sustained momentum and governance that supports bringing people in and out that are going to see that you've got that structure there and it's trusted. And one of the things I've learned about people in Papua New Guinea is that your trust isn't given until you prove that you say you're going to do what you say. Did that make sense? So you say... And if you say you're going to do something, you do it. And when you don't, don't expect to have their trust. And then no matter what happens, you're going to have unintended outcomes. I mean, we've had crazy problems over the last 12 months. I mean, COVID was just one thing. We had a truck breakdown on the way to the Hella Province, I know of P-Dimension Access. And we had to literally take 130,000 vines off a truck, keep them watered and then buy a new truck. And responsiveness is key and having the channels in place where, you know, if you say that it's a priority that you're respected as a partner and it's going to be taken seriously, all these things, I think, make the cake that leads you to success. And I think the most important one in my opinion is that executive endorsement of all the partners in the cross-sector partnership. Thank you. Over to you, Spina. Thanks, Karen. And I think I'm going to pick up on a few of the things that you've touched on and some of the other speakers have touched on because I do think they're important. So, you know, first and foremost, someone called out, I think it was Mulvanna, called out leadership and, you know, commitment to the effort and then also the common understanding and, you know, these partnerships, they need to be intentional and they need to enable openness and diversity of thoughts. So true collaboration, working together. There also needs to be a recognition that the actors do not have the same drivers. So there's a coming together around a mutual objective or objectives, but someone talked about the Venn diagram, there are limits to where these overlap. And I think, and that's important. It's important to recognize both the drivers and the limits because the point at which each actor doesn't, you know, that's the point at which they don't share that commonality. And arguably, I would say those partnerships can't exist beyond that commonality, but they can very comfortably exist within it. So, you know, the partnership, it doesn't mean, you know, adopting wholesale the other organizations' missions and values. And I'm a big fan of partnerships of unlikely allies. I think they can work, I've seen them work very well together where they have that mutual objective because they bring together approaches and networks and resources that, you know, other partners within that partnership may not otherwise have access to. So recognizing too that the different actors have different roles to play for that reason. So for example, in the impact investing market, we like to talk about government and government can be a great source of funding. But beyond that, governments are uniquely placed to set the regulatory condition or to signal to the market. So in the case of market building, an important role for government is much more than the funding relationship. It's in creating that enabling environment which only the government can do. And maybe because this is a DFAT call, it seems appropriate to really acknowledge the leadership role that DFAT has played particularly in the global impact investing space and within that, particularly around investing in women and gender lens investing. So thank you. Okay, thank you very much Karen and Sabina. Okay, so that finishes the section of our prepared questions on topics we thought were really important to be getting some insights into. So now Shannon, across to you to moderate the Q and A session, thanks. Thank you and thank you to all the panelists who participated. I've just gotten the first question in from Natasha Kidd. Do you see youth organizations playing an important role in building trust, honesty, connections and partnerships to advance Australia's partnerships in our region? How have the new Colombo plan and NCP alumni contributed to this goal? Do you want to head that in any particular direction or are you looking for volunteers? Looking for volunteers. I'm not sure if any of our group has got much experience with the new Colombo plan. So I don't know to extent they'll be in a strong position to comment on that. I know in my past life with all search there have been a number of new Colombo plan people who've come through P&G and spent quite a number of months. I think it's an essential part of demonstrating corporate Australia's commitment to social development and teaching, providing an experience for participants in the new Colombo plan. An understanding of some of the challenges of what does actually happen on the ground in a developing country and how businesses and government work trying to address some of those challenges. Every one of the participants that I spoke to during and after the P&G experience that they had were deeply, I think, challenged and moved by what they saw and was very impactful to pass an understanding of what does work and what doesn't work and equally the challenges of actually doing things well with proper governance in a country like P&G. To say it, I think there's a big gap between people who talk on Zooms and Teams and WebEx in nice places in Australia and actually the reality of getting to the ground in a developing country where pressures and challenges are very, very different and sometimes not well understood in the context of an office. So having the new Colombo plan people come through understand the challenges, understand the culture of the people as well very importantly and what makes them think a massive positive for Australia and the younger generation as a whole and participants in the things. I'm a big champion of NCP and it does a fantastic job and the job that I think Julie Bishop wanted it to do. If I may, I won't speak about the new Colombo plan because I'm not well qualified to do that. I would love to comment on it a bit about the youth and I think that absolutely they have and are playing a really important role. If I look at Impact Investing Australia one of the things we do domestically is we run a growth grant which supports later stage social enterprises who are looking to scale their impact by taking on investment capital and we see a range of brilliant entrepreneurs coming through people and a lot of young people in particular coming up with new ideas. We're actually the business model is part of solving the social or environmental problem and they're just thinking about problems in different ways and thinking about impact in different ways so people of my generation we often think about it's almost a dichotomy, it's a very binary you have impact on one hand, finance on the other whereas really the new thinking that we're seeing coming through is that every investment, every action so every investment has an impact and it can be from a scale of negative to positive and I think we're seeing a lot of that coming through in the next generation so yes I'm full of hope and admiration for the ideas that are coming through. Fantastic, thank you both for your insights on that. This next question is from Liam Holt and I think I'm going to direct it at Dan Evans and Liza Garcia as they are core members of the XPI community and structure and this question is how does XPI ensure that community consultation is at the center of its focus? How does it uphold such a focus in achieving its outcome? Okay I might start and then ask slides to follow I think my own perception anyway I'm not a development specialist so I'll put that up front but because we have a very strong view that any pilot project must have counterparties in country okay so I think fundamentally that's the way this gets assured it's really a question of choosing the right in-country counterparties to make sure they've got the credentials, the track record of being a community inclusive I think someone like Karen will probably comment on this as well because they're really about community sort of inclusive businesses but that would be my sort of top among response it's really about selecting the right partners to be my view of it and then obviously making sure the framework is put together so that these things are clearly articulated they're not left a chance but they're articulated right up front that's kind of where we're coming from as far as putting together partnership guide lines including an early MOU that would cover off a number of the things that people like Morgana and Sabina have covered so that it's really understood where each one's coming from but then if you like where the overlap is and what the neutral commitments are that's right and I just want to add something well the approach of TPI something that we already mentioned is disporcies, coalition, catalyst, convener and collaborator so we actually can find these elements into applying into all our pilot projects for example we convene with these stakeholder partnerships we catalyze pilot projects and something that is fundamental for X-Py is to collaborate with local people and we want local people to have ownership and to guide us to co-create these projects and based on that we want to form this coalition of like-minded people across the sectors so yeah I just want to add that Thank you both this next question is for Julie can you give some insight into the current status and key investment criteria by impact investors in Asia Pacific Development projects? No I can't I think that would be more Sabina might be able to have a go I don't know can you but no I can't we actually at Aiden undertook a research project early on a couple of years ago to actually try and track the flows out of Australia where they were going from who they were coming from around private capital and investment and we failed so I think there is an issue around comparison of apples with oranges in relation to data but Sabina might have a go at it Can you repeat the question please I can't see it I'm sorry Absolutely can you give some insight into the current status and key investment criteria by impact investors in Asia Pacific Development projects? So I think for impact investors come in all different shapes and sizes to Julie's point it is it is still emerging as a market I referred earlier to some of the work that's being done by different market builders so you can focus by sector or you can focus by asset class and I think we're still seeing a lot of a lot of institutional investors looking in the region we're seeing a lot of we're not seeing as much capital as we'd like to see coming from Australia into these emerging markets I guess but I would point you to resources such as the Global Searing Group or the GEM for answers to that question Thank you This next question is from Nick Orton He's wondering what role the legal sector can play in cross-sectoral partnerships He's grateful if any of the panel can share experiences they've had with for example law firms or legal regulatory advice and assistance That's open to anyone who wants to jump in I'll start something I'll make a contribution So it's a P&G related issue and it's a group called Businesses for Health and essentially it's a TB advocacy group in P&G So it's not the Global Fund's TB principle recipient but it's if you like a spin-off from what was business against HIV-AIDS and now it's focused on TB So in Port Morrisby the legal sector, the professional service sector is providing very extensive pro-bono support for their executive director Dr. Aaron Clark So without that sort of support he would have a much more difficult time financially making a reasonable sort of fist of her business economics So that's a really obvious area where the legal profession can help out supporting some of these NGO-type initiatives who often don't have a very secure long-term funding source So that's one thought for me anyway It's something that's very practical very real ongoing as we speak in Port Morrisby I will jump in here being a lawyer I think one of the prime skill sets that lawyers have is project management I mean that's what you're taught to given sort of a deadline and you have to work back from and you often have to coordinate teams So I think they have a role in sort of facilitating the logistics and actually bringing various groups together and moderating and negotiating because I think a lot of the sort of outcomes around successful partnerships are strong negotiations about listening to other people understanding values, objectives and negotiating compromises that people actually are happy So I see that as a big role for lawyers Thank you so much The next question is from Paul Moffitt Do the panelists have any comments on how cross-sector partnerships might evolve in the coming decades if the Asia-Pacific middle class continues to expand at its current rate? Okay, let me make some opening comments and then hopefully others will have more insightful comments To the extent the middle class keeps increasing in Asia-Pacific hopefully they themselves will become project initiators and or project partners through the businesses that they're involved in through their own philanthropic activities. I mean if they're middle class maybe they're not ready to be philanthropic contributors but the point is they can still align with SDG priorities and if you like the concept of partnerships and they can find way to be influencers even if in fact they're not in a position to be say financial supporters I mean there's such a wide range of roles because it's a change of mindset, it's a movement so I would have thought there's room for contributions of all different components across the socioeconomic spectrum Absolutely So the second part of that question says that there's a greater incentive for involvement of the sector so I might pick up on that and just say I'm sure that's right I'm sure that we will see that growing movement which is welcome I would also like to say that I don't see the private sector as a silver bullet solution so that's why these cross-sectoral partnerships are so important I think there is a really important role for actors such as government and philanthropy to play and I think that the private capital should not go cannot go and should not go Probably I would have people challenging me to extent of where those limits are What it can do is it can free up the very valuable capital that is government or philanthropic capital to do the hard intractable things that the market will not solve and then what it does is that it enables the government to do the job or the philanthropy or civil society whatever it is so I think that's a really interesting question but I do to the point that I made earlier that even in cross-sectoral partnerships everyone has a different role to play and I think that's really important to know Fantastic For this next question I might pass it on to Peter Button What do you consider to be the key blockages of the business sector's involvement in social development partnership Look I think they've been covered a little bit in previous speakers I think there are a range of challenges and blockages leadership is definitely one of those and I think there's no doubt that leaders of organizations in the private sector don't always get the importance of actually playing a part in social development within the country in which they work I think there are people that absolutely do get that and there are more and more of those people that see that just making a profit giving a dividend to shareholders is just not enough anymore and I think that pressure is also coming from investors generally I think it's absolutely fundamental that the change and pressure that comes from investors on climate change for instance is an absolutely critical turning point in the way the private sector has done a deal with this in fact in some circumstances they will edit other parts of government and elsewhere and I think that was also moving in the social development areas and certainly an essential part of working in a developing country such as Papua New Guinea it really is such an important business driver for a sustainable long-term business I completely agree that the private sector, there are places the private sector should not go and but even recently I've seen examples through dealing with the COVID pandemic in Papua New Guinea where many of the multilaterals, bilateral governments, departments etc were brought together and the private sector wasn't involved at all and that comes from a number of reasons perhaps it's not to be true those actors don't look necessarily to the private sector for where they can provide help I think there's a latent suspicion about the private sector becoming involved in this and the only way you can get past that is good communication, good leadership and there's a really well set out description of the goals the reasons you're in this and wanting to help so I think you're absolutely right that there are places where private sector should not go but equally I can tell you there's a substantial still a substantial prejudice within various sectors that just don't want to be tainted by the presence of private sector engagement and I think that's in governments that's in multilaterals biolaterals and NGOs the only way you can break that down good communication and common goals and have everybody lay out why they're in it and trust obviously becomes important it's something that's not going to get fixed in five minutes but I'm optimistic that private sector overall and leaders within the private sector are now seeing being pushed to a degree by their investors doing so much more than just delivering value to shareholders is part of a poor responsibility now I find that very encouraging and certainly is far far better off in terms of commitment to these sorts of things than it was 10 years ago fantastic people new direction thank you so much do we have time for one more question why not this question is from Alan Adwell is DFAT the only government department that could participate in cross sector partnerships are there other key players okay so I was just the prototype in response to Alan quite obviously DFAT's not the only game in town even though it's scale wise it's the dominant one but the example is the Victorian government's engagement in Timor-Leste over a very extended period of time based on Steve Brack's leadership I think for 10 years he had a funded role on Harold Mitchell Foundation basically to act as a mentor to the first president or prime minister of Timor-Leste but related to that there are a whole series of different initiatives that that Victorian government was involved in typically around health sector but not only people like John Thwaites who is now chair of the development institute has been up in Timor-Leste in around water related issues trying to come up with a plan for if you like better water management so I think the answer is absolutely not but scale wise I think there's no doubt about the fact that DFAT will always be by far and away the dominant player is that question related only to development because if it's not only I mean first of all other government departments and maybe I'm taking your this is your question to answer other government departments do deliver Australia's official development assistance but to Dan's point not to the same DFAT's responsibility but within the Australian government or the state governments absolutely they should all be working across sector partnerships and one of the limitations is the way that we appropriate and set out our budgets so we do it by portfolio and portfolio outcomes where really the kind of multi disciplinary approaches that we're talking about need to be across the portfolios great thank you both so much for answering that question and to all the panelists for participating was truly an insightful hour and 15 minutes and I think that time's up now so I'll pass it back to DFAT to wrap up and I'm sorry for any questions that weren't able to be answered because of time constraints as well I'll just quickly jump in here introduce myself to those Michael Bergman director of the New Colombo plan and I wanted to thank all of the presenters and panelists for the fantastic attendees today I know Matt had some wonderful welcome but I'd just like to throw mine in there as well my appreciation for everyone before we close and to remind everyone that we've also got a bit of a break in the momentum session next week before we kick off again on the 13th of May in Perth so online and in person one again around breaking the bamboo ceiling which looks like it's going to be a really fascinating discussion as well but sorry Matt I cut you off there just for a second I was just getting one unmuted all good excellent great that I think that asked for the day and again thanks everyone thanks for all the fantastic questions the video will be slightly edited just for not for content but just for ease of viewing and will be placed up on YouTube soon so and we'll put some notification about that through the standard ncp channel primarily through our LinkedIn group but again thank you everyone and thanks to Vishen for your fantastic chairing for Dan as well and all the speakers so cheers everyone thank you see ya bye bye now