This is my second post on Fred Fisk, best known for the idea of “subsistence affluence” in Papua New Guinea. After about 1970, Fisk’s energies were directed to smaller Pacific states, characterised by ...

Papua New Guinea has nine months to strengthen its anti-money laundering (AML) measures to avoid being grey-listed following an evaluation by the Asia-Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG), a ...

Australia’s foreign aid (Official Development Assistance or ODA) for 2025-26 is budgeted at $5.097 billion, a 2.7% increase ...

The 2025-26 federal budget will see Australian Official Development Assistance (ODA) remain largely steady in real terms at an estimated $5.097 billion in the coming financial year, or 0.18% of Gross ...

On 25 March 2025, the Papua New Guinea government shut down Facebook for a day without notice, leaving the roughly 1.4 to 1.6 million users in the country offline, according to Facebook analytics.

The continuing prohibition on girls’ education beyond Year 6 imposes a profound burden on Afghan society and the economy, ...

World War II plunged Fred Fisk into the emerging field of ‘development’ in colonial Malaya. Feeling inadequate to the task, he looked to the 1950s literature – Amar Narain Agarwala, Sampat Pal Singh, ...

In an era of increased geopolitical competition, there are growing calls for policy makers and citizens in Australia and New Zealand to improve their understanding of the Pacific Islands region. To ...

Supporting PNG university students to return to their home districts and share their learning with citizens is the most effective way to ensure rural communities are armed with greater knowledge in ...

The Devpolicy Blog is based at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.