The year 2003 marks the 21st year of the series of National Evaluation Conferences (NECs) and international conferences, as well as the sixteenth year of the AES. This paper is not intended as a full history, nor as a dossier of the AES per se; that is for another time and place. Rather, it seeks both to reflect on whether there is a distinctive flavour of public sector program evaluation in the antipodes, and to give an overview of how evaluation developed in Australia, and to a lesser extent New Zealand. This will require the opening up and examination of the historical roots of program evaluation in Australia and of some aspects of current practice.
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