Monday, October 11, 2010

Sydney Conf, more pics

Here are some pictures during the 4th Pacific Rim Policy Exchange, held in Sheraton on the Park hotel, Sydney, Australia, September 28-30, 2010. Of the six panel discussions in the conference, excluding 2 lunch speakers and 2 dinner speakers, I don't have picture of Panel 4.

Here is Panel 1, "Obstacles to Investments". From left to right: Panel moderator, Ms. Mary Kissel of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), Hong Kong; Speakers Peter Holle of Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCC)), Canada; Jargal Dambadarjaa of Mongolians for Fair Taxes and Wise Spending; and Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute, India.


Panel 2 was on "Free Trade". Moderator was Alec van Gelder of the International Policy Network (IPN, London, UK), standing. The speakers, from left to right: (1) Roger Kerr of New Zealand Business Roundtable; (2) Martin Krause of ESEADE and CIIMA, Buenos Aires, Argentina; and (3) Todd Myers of Washington Policy Center (WPC, Seattle, Washington, USA).

I spoke on Panel 3, "Getting the Free Market Message Out". Our moderator was John Kartch of ATR, middle. The other 2 speakers were (at John's right) David Farrar of Kiwi Blog, NZ; and Dr. Khalil Ahmad of Alternate Solutions Institute, Lahore, Pakistan. My paper there is posted below. I am thankful to Baagi Shagdar of EBI think tank, Mongolia, for this picture. Khalil though, is not shown in this picture.

Here's Panel 5, "IP, Jobs and the Economy". The moderator was Ms. Kelsey Zahourek of the Property Rights Alliance (PRA, Washington DC, USA), standing. The two speakers, from left to right, were Tim Wilson of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA, Melbourne, Australia), and Michael Williams of Gilbert and Tobin Law Firm, Sydney, Australia.

This is Panel 6, "Best Practices for Reducing Government". From left to right were: (1) Wan Saiful Wan Jan of Institute for Democracy and Economic Affairs (IDEAS), Malaysia; (2) Grover Norquist, ATR President; (3) Peter Wong of Lion Rock Institute, Hong Kong; (4) Parth Shah of Centre for Civil Society (CCS), India; and (5) Ken Phillips of Independent Contractors of Australia.

Below are other pictures outside of the panel discussions.

Part of the audience on Day 1. I took this while I was on stage for our panel 3 discussions.

Another view of the audience in one of two lunch with speakers. Panel discussions end at around 12:45pm, lunch with speaker and open forum are at 1-3pm. Our free time was only from 3-6pm, cocktails and dinner with speaker started at 6pm.

With Alec van Gelder of IPN and Mary Kissel of WSJ. I told Mary that I follow her on twitter. Of course I also follow Alec on twitter. IPN people are among my closest friends in the free market movement, they help us a lot in our work in Manila.

From left: Raymond Ho of Momentum 107, Hong Kong; Rowan Callick, Editor of The Australian, who was our 1st of two dinner speakers; Chung-ho Kim of Center for Free Enterprise (CFE), S. Korea; and Martin Krause of ESEDA, Argentina.

At the farewell dinner. From left to right: Baagi Shagdar of EBI, Mongolia; Parth Shah of CCS, India; Xingyuan Feng of CIPA, China; oh well, I forgot our Australian friend's name here.

And here's another picture, from John Kartch's camera. From left: Mr. You of Japanese for Tax Reforms (JTR); Khalil Ahmad of AS Institute, Pakistan; me; Ms. Keaton Benn of Doner Fundraising; Raymond Ho from HK, and John Kartch.

It was a productive and sometimes mentally-sapping forum because of the fast pace of panel discussions then lunch with speaker. The farewell dinner was a good way to unwind and be merry.

I am super-thankful to the Americans for Tax Reforms (ATR) for the travel scholarship that they again gave to me. Thanks a lot -- Grover, Kelsey, Jane, John, others.

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