Australian aid after the ‘Golden Consensus’: from aid policy to development policy?

ABSTRACT

In the decade preceding the election of the Abbott Coalition Government in 2013, a so-called ‘golden consensus’ governed Australian aid policy. During this period Australia’s aid spending increased by over 80% in real terms. However, after winning government the 2013 Federal Election, the Abbott Government made a series of significant and unexpected aid policy decisions, cutting the aid budget three times in fifteen months and integrating AusAID, Australia’s aid agency, into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This article considers the future role of aid in Australia’s diplomacy primarily by engaging with a prior question: how was it possible for the golden consensus to be uprooted so easily? Conducting a post-mortem reveals that Australia’s development constituency bears some responsibility for the fragility of the consensus. This analysis also reveals the critical role the development constituency will play in determining the extent to which Australia is able to embrace the ‘beyond aid’ agenda. To meet this contemporary challenge, the development community must heed the lessons of the collapse of the golden consensus and, in particular, overcome its reticence to engage in broader foreign policy debates.     

First Geochemical ‘Fingerprinting’ of Balkan and Prut Flint from Palaeolithic Romania: Potentials,Limitations and Future Directions

Long‐distance raw material transfers across Romania prior to the Last Glacial Maximum have previously been inferred from either visual and/or petrographic observations of East Carpathian sites. We investigated the potential to ‘fingerprint’ flint from archaeological sites at Mitoc‐Malu Galben and Bistricioara–Lut?rie III in Eastern Romania, using in situ high‐precision analyses of 28 major, minor and trace elements determined by laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry (LA–ICP–MS) in combination with multivariate statistical analysis. Our results suggest that geochemical analyses have the ability to distinguish between different geographical sources but are unable to positively associate flint artefacts from archaeological contexts to these geochemical groups. The mismatches of signatures between artefacts and geological materials, however, raise new questions and open unforeseen perspectives.     

West Papua and the Australia-Indonesia relationship: a case study in diplomatic difficulty

This article is a study of West Papua's impact on the relationship between Australia and Indonesia. Its purpose is to enhance understanding of various diplomatic challenges emerging from West Papua, the origins of these challenges, and how they impact upon the relationship. This will be achieved through an analysis of a particular incident in 2006 in which 43 West Papuan refugees arrived in Australia. This led to a diplomatic storm between the Indonesian and Australian governments, and a highly charged public debate. Insights will be gleaned from the incident and its aftermath to broaden our understanding of West Papua's impact on the Australia-Indonesia relationship.     

Renewing the War on prostitution: The spectres of 'trafficking' and 'slavery'

The 1990s saw government initiatives restricting immigration in many countries, and a good deal of popular unease. Associated policies have targeted sex workers, as with the Policing and Crime Bill that is currently in its Third Reading in the House of Commons (UK). In the name of 'victims' of a trade organised by 'evil' traffickers, this Bill seeks further sanctions against all of those involved. This editorial asks whether initiatives during the current recession might not seem to succeed but for the wrong reasons. Immigrants are already leaving the UK in search of a living while local workers, who were promised safer working conditions in the wake of the murder of five women in Ipswich (2006), will be punished more and more. With its apparently humanitarian efforts to 'stop the traffic', the UK government will turn out to have replaced our 'slaves' from abroad with home-grown substitutes, and effectively solidified and further excluded an underclass. This situation suggests striking parallels with the panic over white slavery during the last comparable period of globalisation culminating in the First World War.