Andrew Leigh

'Vertical funds' are playing an increasingly important role in foreign aid these days. One of these is the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), which received an extra $200 million injection from Australia at a donor meeting in London a week ago. Kevin Rudd's speech received plaudits from those who attended (Bruce Boyd told me of a colleague at the meeting who said the announcement 'took people's breath away'). Given how well GAVI has performed in assessments such as the UK multilateral aid review, this is good news indeed.

Another vertical fund that Australia contributes to is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The fund will be holding its fourth Partnership Forum in Sao Paulo from 28-30 June, and I'll be attending as part of a parliamentarians' event on 27 June. You can guarantee that I won't be making any spectacular pledges of Australian aid, but I am looking forward to the conversation.

Flying from Australia to Brazil is messier than you might think (I'm getting there via South Africa), so it turns out that I won't be able to return in time for the community forum that I had advertised for Saturday 2 July in Downer Community Centre. I'll post details here once I've rescheduled that event. Apologies to inner north residents for any inconvenience.