Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

All of the rhetoric and all of the pronouncements of what might happen in the future with a tightened budget and greater controls does not overcome the reality of here, today. That reality is a significant reduction of $650 million in aid to our region. This region does matter. It is not only the question of increased Chinese activity in the region with regard to its foreign aid budget and it is not only the question of how we look in the world. It is the realities. The relevant United Nations body recently pronounced:

The Pacific faces the highest levels of vulnerability, with very low coping capacity and resilience to the endogenous and exogenous shocks that has adversely impacted Pacific communities in recent years. As a result, the Pacific region runs the very high risk of not achieving the MDGs.

The Pacific is not performing well on many goals and the region is struggling. That is where we live. That is where we want to influence. That is where we can be effective. I do not have to cite only United Nations bodies as to how important it is to concentrate on this region. The DFAT site says of Tonga, 'It is an important regional partner.' It further notes increasing levels of debt and declining quality of education. Of Samoa it pronounces, 'Almost 27 per cent of the population live below the national basic needs poverty line.' DFAT says of Vanuatu, 'Many of Vanuatu’s people live in poverty, have poor health, and cannot access opportunities and services such as education.'

I have had the opportunity in a recent study to see what we are doing in Tonga and Samoa, and it is very real. I went to the SENESE disability organisation, which has been up by an Australian expatriate there who married a local Samoan. It is now able to provide enough work for a doctor there so that they can have a full-time person helping people with disabilities. They can repair hearing aids, so they do not have to go back to Melbourne and cost thousands of dollars for repair. They are training people to make sure the education system is able to help people who are disabled.

I saw youth ambassadors, people on a stipend who are working for those communities. I saw people inside the Treasury department of those countries making sure that what those opposite are talking about happens, that the budget is improved, that there are controls. I witnessed a situation in which Tonga, being a very flat nation, very hard hit by tsunamis and other measures is doing land reclamation. I visited police stations where we are doing reconstruction, where we are making sure that their technology is up to date, where we are making sure that there is no abuse of services. I saw primary school openings, where we have done the repairs. This is the reality of what our foreign aid program is undertaking in the region at the moment.

Finally, it is all right for people to talk about the need for tightening, but in statements of the then shadow foreign affairs minister—now the Minister for Foreign Affairs—time after time, we saw inferences to the Australian public that Labor had done wrong by reducing the budget. Yet, when the Abbott government came to power, they reduced aid by $650 million in the region that matters to us, the region where we can be effective.

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