How does the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS) challenge the conception of what aid is, who works on it, and who benefits from it?

In the first part of the PLS mini-series, we profiled the hard yakka that is the daily grind inside Warrnambool’s meatworks. This episode we leave the factory gates and head out into the community to learn why the PLS is so much more than simple stratagem to fill gaps in Australia’s assembly lines. We cheer from the sidelines during a Timor-Leste versus Vietnam soccer match, dial home to see how the money earned at Midfields is being distributed and spent, celebrate Pedro Lay’s 40th birthday, share fish and chips with a remarkable Fijian woman called Ana, listen to a Timorese choir ring through the pews at local mass, and speak to our very own PLS fixer, Dr Michael Rose from The Development Policy Centre, about opportunities to expand the scheme.

Recommended reading: Feast your eyes on more meaty PLS content at DevPolicy, and read up on the Timorese experience in Warrnambool with a blog piece by Dr Michael Rose and another by East Timorese PLS worker Cornelio Dos Santos.

Something to workshop: Next week, The Development Policy Centre is hosting a one-day workshop on Pacific migration. To join in the discussion on regional labour markets, economic mobility, and social impacts of the various schemes, sign up here.

Behind the curtain: We are on air thanks to the ANU’s Development Policy Centre.

• Host, Gordon Peake: Twitter | Writing
• Producer, Julia Bergin: Twitter | Writing
• Sound Design: Luther Canute

Visual credits: Julito Couto Miranda interviews Dr Michael Rose on the sidelines of a Timor Leste versus Vietnam soccer match. Photo courtesy of MOU.

Foreign aid has traditionally occurred “over there”, so what happens when international development is delivered within our borders? 

This episode we take to the road and head to Warrnambool, a large country town in Victoria’s West, and the site of one of Australia’s more unusual and noteworthy aid projects: the Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS). In a bid to understand the work and life conditions of the East Timorese and Pacific Islanders brought to Australia under the PLS, we turn to Warrnambool’s meat processing facility, Midfield Meats. Following a safety briefing and a head-to-toe kit of personal protective equipment, we venture inside the abattoir to get the full story. We speak with a number of East Timorese PLS workers, including Pedro Lay, Vicente Pinto, and Teresinha Klau, as well as Midfield General Manager Dean McKenna, Plant Manager Alistair Sharp, and Training Manager Mick Williams, dissecting what the job entails for both employee and employer.

Post-production fact check: We made two errors in the podcast and we'd like to correct the record.

1. The Pacific Labour Scheme is a temporary migration program, not an aid-for-migration program.
2. The ANU Development Policy Centre has been researching Pacific labour mobility since 2010 not 2015.

Recommended reading: Feast your eyes on more meaty PLS content at DevPolicy, and read up on the Timorese experience in Warrnambool with a blog piece by Dr Michael Rose and another by East Timorese PLS worker Cornelio Dos Santos.

Behind the curtain: We are on air thanks to the ANU’s Development Policy Centre.

• Host, Gordon Peake: Twitter | Writing
• Producer, Julia Bergin: Twitter | Writing
• Sound Design: Luther Canute

Visual credits: The flags of Timor Leste, China, Vietnam, and Australia  fly out the front of Midfield Meats. Photo courtesy of MOU.

The international aid set-up struggles to know how to work in countries that do not exist. Sometimes resources are poured into these places, and sometimes they are ignored entirely. But is splendid isolation from aid such a bad thing?

In this episode we travel to Somaliland, the northern most segment of Somalia, to tell the story of a nation that was founded on its own. We speak to Dr Sarah Phillips, an academic at the University of Sydney and author of the book When There Was No Aid, as well as Mohamed Ahmed, Sarah’s research assistant, and Ayan Mahamoud, former Head of Mission of the Republic of Somaliland to the United Kingdom, to understand how a place more state-like than state on the world map but with no flag at the United Nations, has built itself into the Horn of Africa’s sole democracy.

Recommended reading: For more on the state of play in Somaliland, read Sarah’s book When There Was No Aid, as well as Gordon’s blog piece “Doing better without aid: the case of Somaliland”. As for the global status quo on states, see the Handbook of State Recognition.

Behind the curtain: We are on air thanks to the ANU’s Development Policy Centre.

• Host, Gordon Peake: Twitter | Writing
• Producer, Julia Bergin: Twitter | Writing
• Sound Design: Luther Canute

Visual credits: Children looking after goats in a village near Somaliland's Burco region. Photo courtesy of Ayan Mahamoud.