PANELLISTS

Professor Peter Singer – Ira W DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne's Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics and author of The Life you can Save.  

Tim Costello  - CEO, World Vision Australia

MODERATOR - Robyn Archer

The Hon Bob McMullan MP.  Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance

Claire Slatter - Development Expert, Fiji National University

John Roskam - Executive Director, Institute for Public Affairs

Associate Professor Lisa Cameron - Director, Asian Economics Centre, University of Melbourne

A debate-style forum exploring such questions as:

• What sorts of obligations do individual Australians have to the poor in countries other than their own?
• What sorts of obligations does the Australian government – as an example of
  Western governments generally – have to poor countries?
• What obligations does it have to the poor within these countries?
• Does  the Australian government have an obligation that goes beyond foreign
  aid provided in line with Australian national interest?
• Are the above obligations and responsibilities rendered more acute by the
  impact of the Global Financial Crisis on private finance flowing to
  developing countries?
• Are Australians benefiting from the
  global capitalist system in way that increases the burden on the poor
  in other countries? If so, what is an appropriate response?
• Depending on how the moral question of obligations to the poor is resolved, what
  are the implications for non-government practitioners such as
  International Women's Development Agency and World Vision Australia?
  Especially, are they thinking through fully what empowerment of the
  poor might imply?
• How do ‘Southern’ countries perceive the
  issue of responsibilities and obligations? Do they see it as just
  Western paternalism mixed with liberal guilt and some hypocrisy? Do
  they see such obligations as necessary to identify and then insist on?
• Ultimately, what do the respective panellists think a ‘just world’ looks like?