InnovationXchange

On the just announced InnovationXchange.

A new foreign Aid initiative by Australia and the Bloomberg’s founder – a $35m per annum center in Canberra (of all places) that will focus on assessing why decades of foreign aid, like Australia’s supposed $5b per annum effort, hasn’t sorted out any of the world’s problems

“The former New York mayor’s Bloomberg Philanthropies will contribute $US85m (cash or in-kind I wonder?) towards the cost of the Data for Health project. The Australian government will contribute $20m, of which $15m will come from the new innov­ationXchange budget and $5m from the health segment of the remaind­er of the aid budget. The (residual $15m of the) $140m outlay over four years for the innovationXchange centre will come from the overall aid budget”.

This is brilliant. Foreign aid expenditure that is spent in Australia. A building in Canberra for people to visit. Data for Bloombergs to capture and re-sell. An opportunity to abduct all the metadata in the pacific just for the hell of it. And at virtually no incremental cost to the government. It’s what you would call a no-brainer.

The foreign minister Ms Bishop “hopes innovation­Xchange will develop a hi-tech start-up mentality”. In Canberra? And just to double down on this one – “It will be headed by a senior Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade bureaucrat”.