MPW Australia

MPW Australia was a commercial company registered as MPW Rural Development Pty Ltd in 1977 to conduct international development advisory work. It was formed by Drs. Jerry Murray and Eryl Pitt and Mr. Richard Wittenoom, and initially worked from the Wittenoom’s offices in West Perth. Up until 1980, it was a means of conducting individual advisory services to international development agencies, and thereafter, with the joining of Dr. Lindsay Falvey (who later become MD in Melbourne) and Mr. John Leake (Adelaide) as Directors, it expanded into management contracts for Australian aid with offices in five Australian capital cities and in Manila and Bangkok. Consultancy clients included World Bank, Asian Development Bank, IFAD, various UN agencies, other bilateral governments, private clients and NGOs. Mr. Wayne Haslam (Canberra) joined as a Director to bring large-project management skills to the group around 1985.

Other key figures in the company included; Dr. Phillips Young, Mr. David King, Mr. Norman Welsh. Mr. Richard Holloway, Mr. Geoff Anderson, Mr. Ron McMahon, Mr. John Reid, Mr. Ian Talks, Ms. Val Kelly, Ms. Josie McMahon, and Ms. Karen Hill, among many others.

The group maintained an ethos of professionalism, maintenance of current knowledge of their fields and countries of expertise, and a language base that enabled true interaction in development situations. It sponsored publications, completion of aid activities when untimely terminatations for political reasons threathened project benficiaries, and visits of aspiring leaders in their fields from developing countries. Some of this ethos continues through the related group, The Institute for International Development.

Through the 1980s MPW Australia grew rapidly as a result of both its focus on recruiting more highly qualified consultants than the average of the international development field, and its marketing to, and good relations with, clients. With projects in tens of countries and a multi-million dollar turnover, negotiations were opened with Coffeys, which led to merger in the form of Coffey-MPW Pty Ltd as a wholly owned company of Coffey International Ltd listed on the Australian Stock Exchange – and in 1992, with Falvey as MD was listed as the largest Australian exporter of professional services by Austrade.

MPW Australia was retained as a trading name until the late 1990s when it was withdrawn by its new owners, the ethos having withered long before that.

A history of the period 1977-1993 is lodged with National Library, Canberra.

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Reference:A History of MPW Australia. Melbourne 1993. National Library Canberra.