Michael Morgan elected Secretary of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies |
CDI Deputy Director Michael Morgan was elected secretary of the inaugural conference of the Australian Association for the Advancement of Pacific Studies (AAAPS) held 24-27 January at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane , Australia . The four day conference included the formal launch of the AAAPS as an important initiative designed to promote the teaching and study of the Pacific Islands in Australian Universities. As such, the conference showcased Australian excellence in disciplinary and interdisciplinary humanities research, scholarship and tertiary teaching about the Pacific Islands .
At this event, Michael Morgan presented key findings of CDI's major research project, Political Parties in the Pacific Islands (Pandanus Press, 2006 forthcoming), and outlined avenues for using this applied research in CDI's political parties strengthening programs. His presentation surveyed the recent adoption in PNG of stronger national regulatory frameworks for parliamentary parties, the strengthening and democratizing of internal governance arrangements, and broadening the appeal of political parties beyond specific groups of voters, and charted what avenues exist for political party strengthening more generally in Melanesia based on these experiences. Given the recommendations of the Senate Committee on Australia's relations with Papua New Guinea and the islands of the south-west Pacific (2003), which pilloried the absence of any pervasive, coherent practice of engagement which brings Australia and Pacific countries together, the paper also explores the implications of CDI's "practitioner-oriented" approach to political parties' capacity building and reform programs.
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