Richard Moore – Aid Budgets, China and Confronting our Critics
Welcome to Episode 4 of Good Will Hunters! In this episode I chat with Richard Moore, the former deputy-director of AusAID. We talk about our greatest aid successes, and our one big aid failure. We discuss how to remain relevant, why we need to confront our critics, the rise of Chinese aid, and why we really need to stop talking about aid budget and start talking about the quality of our aid, plus lots more. Richard drops some real truth-bombs in this episode – this is a discussion that anyone working in the aid sector, or interested in aid, really needs to hear.
We have endemic “problems without borders” globally, we’re all developing countries now and no country can tackle all of the challenges they face unilaterally. Global cooperation is vital to sustaining progress on human development and yet our aid sector has become more insular than ever. Traditional western ideals on economic growth and development are breaking down, and increasingly countries are refusing to accept the development status quo and instead look to working with new and emerging donors, like China. A major part of combating these challenges is getting our discussion right here in Australia, by being conscious of the way we talk about development and moving away from our obsession with aid budgets and towards a more qualitative, theoretical discussion on the future of our aid.
This is a big discussion so settle in, get comfortable and enjoy! You may agree with some points and you may disagree with others. Please join our discussion on Facebook and share your feedback, we love hearing it!
3:40 – Australia’s aid successes
10:12 – The single biggest failure of the aid sector
12:13 – How do we ensure our aid stays relevant?
16:25 – Confronting our critics
20:42 – Threats to the Western ‘growth and development’ model
26:34 – The rise of Chinese Aid
32:22 – We’re all developing countries now
39:19 – How to talk about development properly
44:31 – Why we really, really need to stop talking about our aid budget
Royalty Free Music by Bensound
