The National Parliamentary Fellowships Program (NPFP) was established and piloted in 2016 with the goal of promoting exchanges between Australia and the parliaments and legislative bodies of its key partners in Asia. The program is aligned to the aims of the 2012 White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century and of the Reverse Colombo Plan. The program is funded through multiple funding bodies within DFAT, such as the Australia-Japan Foundation and the Australia-China Foundation.

The program is a reciprocal exchange of selected, highly driven and qualified graduates and their placements in national research institutions to work with parliamentary or congressional offices in the Asia-Pacific and in Australia. The purpose is to foster long-term associations and mutual understanding between Australia and countries in the region.

The public seminar in the Murdoch Boardroom will be a presentation from this year’s inbound NPFP-China Fellows. Fellows will present their research conducted while in Canberra followed by questions. The research projects to be discussed in the seminar will be:

Fanlin Ding from Peking University on ‘Economics of the urban sprawl, a look at Melbourne’.

Cao Meng from Peking University on ‘Interpreting Australian public opinion about China: why do negative opinions prevail?’.