Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes the:

(a) importance of the Australian aid program to sustainable economic and social development and poverty alleviation for Pacific nations;

(b) contribution of the Australian aid program to Australia's national interests through support for regional stability, security and prosperity;

(c) Foreign Minister's verbal commitment to not cut Australian development assistance to Pacific nations; and

(d) announcement by the Foreign Minister on 18 January 2014 that $650 million will be cut from Australia's development assistance in 2013-14, including $61.4 million cuts to the following Pacific country and regional programs:

(2) calls on the:

(a) Foreign minister to meet her commitment to not cut Australian development assistance to Pacific nations; and

(b) Government to reverse its $4.5 billion in cuts to Australia’s aid program and reinstate funding to levels published in the 2013-14 budget.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion, and reserve my right to speak.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 19 December, on a steamy day in Port Vila, I was fortunate to visit the Vanuatu Women's Centre in a modest cottage on the outskirts of that nation's capital. There, with the delegation that I was with, I met some special people: young women who had left abusive relationships and who were rebuilding their lives with the support of the remarkable staff of that centre; women who were optimistic about their futures, having received support and training through an Australian technical college; women whose confidence had returned and who were setting up their lives and their own businesses to secure their and their children's futures. This is one of many Australian aid success stories: tackling problems—big problems—at the heart of Melanesian society, namely violence against women and a lack of job opportunities.

I was in the Pacific as part of a delegation led by our nation's foreign minister, Julie Bishop. Also on the delegation were the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and shadow foreign minister, Tanya Plibersek, and the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Brett Mason. Days earlier we had visited the Solomon Islands, and sat in on some training being provided to enthusiastic new recruits of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force undertaking very important training and cultural awareness for when it comes to domestic violence.

Of course, the training was part of a government program largely funded by Australian aid. Both these nations—the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu—are good friends of the Australian people and the Australian nation. In those nations, our foreign minister gave a commitment to the respective prime ministers and publicly that there would be no cuts to foreign aid to Pacific nations. The leaders of those nations were pleased to receive that commitment from the foreign minister. I must say that I was also pleasantly surprised and pleased to hear that commitment given by our nation's foreign minister.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you could have blown me over when I read in the Australian press on 18 January that $650 million was being cut from Australia's development aid in 2013-14, and that $61.4 million was being cut in the Pacific. When I read it my first thought was that it was a mistake, that it could not be right. I was with the foreign minister when she gave the commitment to the people of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. But, unfortunately, the story was right and $61.4 million is being cut from the aid budget to our Pacific neighbours.

No details have yet been announced. We do not know which programs or which services are going to be cut. Are some of those programs that we saw—those positive results that we viewed in the Pacific, combating violence against women—going to be cut? Perhaps that is something that some of the coalition speakers can enlighten us on. These nations—our neighbours and our friends—and our program partners, those wonderful NGOs that deliver these programs on behalf of Australia in these developing nations, deserve the right to know which programs in which services that are funded by the people of Australia are going to be cut.

I suspect that coalition speakers are going to claim that we are currently undertaking a review of aid effectiveness; that our aid is spread too thinly across the world and that it is ineffective. That is complete rubbish! The programs I witnessed, and which the delegation witnessed, tackling big problems at the heart of society in the Pacific, were worth every cent. They are delivered by NGOs that are proven at getting results and improving the living standards of our neighbours. They are programs that are fully audited by the Australian National Audit Office and other checks and balances in our government.

In 2011 the then Labor government undertook an independent review of Australia's aid effectiveness, and answered and adopted all 39 recommendations. This motion calls on our foreign minister to deliver on the commitment that she gave to the people of the Pacific and to deliver to the NGOs, to tell them where these programs are going to be cut.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion that is not only ill-conceived but that is straight-out deceitful.

The very act of raising this motion is a classic and particularly repugnant display of Labor amnesia—something that the opposition has embraced without reservation since being shown the door by the Australian people on 7 September last year. The piece de resistance is Labor's hijacking. They did not want to talk about the hijacking of foreign aid—particularly the budget—when they were in office. They had a very nice little term for it: they called it 'reprioritisation'. Yes, that is what it was called: 'reprioritisation' of $750 million from the aid budget to pay for the onshore costs of their failed border protection policies, something that we have never ever seen the like of before in Australia's history. Now, notwithstanding this travesty, Labor members have the audacity to stand and speak in support of the motion here today.

Of course, there was the $3 billion in diverted aid funding to buy a seat on the United Nations Security Council, with staggering—absolutely staggering—expenditures of $65 million on a telescope in the Chilean desert and $150,000 for a statue in New York to commemorate slavery in the Caribbean. These are things that I have spoken about before in the past in this House. These expenditures are truly difficult to justify when you look at our region, particularly at the infection rates of TB, malaria and HIV-AIDS in our own region and at our own back door. This expenditure becomes shameful when you look at the rates of maternal and infant mortality in the Asia-Pacific region. You really have to wonder exactly what criteria Labor was using in applying Australia's aid budget and making sure that the aid budget was well spent.

By way of contrast, the Abbott government is focused on the expenditure of Australian taxpayer dollars through our foreign aid budget being effective. 'Effective' is a very important word. Being effective in the expenditure of Australian taxpayers' dollars is not something that Labor excel at. What they do excel at is spending it. Again by way of contrast, the Abbott government is committed to an aid program that will help alleviate poverty and lift the living standards of vulnerable people through economic growth. We recognise that sustainable economic growth is the best way in the world to alleviate poverty. This is at the heart of the approach we are taking to aid.

Our approach to prioritising economic growth to alleviate poverty has been endorsed by Erik Solheim, the Chairman of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. Writing in The Australian on 17 January this year he said the government and Foreign Minister Bishop should be applauded for focusing on the importance of economic development. 'Development assistance is good, but economic growth is even better,' he said. As announced before the election, the Abbott government is refocusing our aid, trade and diplomatic efforts in our region, where our national interest is and where we have, and have always had, the most capacity to make a real difference.

As was the case in 1996, the coalition government has been left an economic mess by Labor. MYEFO highlighted the extent of Labor's economic legacy: a $47 billion deficit this year, $123 billion in cumulative deficits over the forward estimates and gross debt projected to rise to $667 billion. Labor's legacy was also a mess in the aid budget. They broke their own promise to increase the aid program to 0.5 per cent of gross national income on three separate occasions. Members opposite do not like to be reminded of that, but the hypocrisy does not end there. In the last 15 months of the Labor government they cut $5.7 billion from the aid budget over the forward estimates. Labor never took their cuts to an election. By contrast, this government made clear before the election its policy of saving $4.5 billion from the aid budget over the forward estimates. The coalition has a mandate to implement its policy decisions.

We make no apologies for taking these hard decisions to claw back Labor's debt and deficit. That is what the Australian people voted for in the election. We are delivering on what the government refused to do. We want to implement rigorous performance benchmarks for the aid program, as recommended in the aid effectiveness review. The Abbott government is cleaning up the mess Labor left domestically and internationally. Part of that job is to have a great aid program. (Time expired)

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Kingsford Smith for his motion that goes to the heart of a number of important issues that have been raised in recent months about the changes to Australia's aid budget. It is certainly the case that when we were in the Pacific, as he pointed out, members of parliament, prime ministers and others in those island nations when meeting with our foreign minister raised their concerns about cuts to Australia's aid program and what it would mean for them. We saw more than once the foreign minister reassure those people that they had nothing to worry about, but, as it turns out, that was a false reassurance.

Our aid program in the Pacific supports those who need it the most. Our programs support healthcare, infrastructure and education programs. They have a very real impact on our neighbours' quality of life. In the healthcare sector we provide drugs and medical equipment, we fund hospital maintenance, we deliver essential medicines, we train doctors and we provide professional training for healthcare workers.

The member for Brisbane, the previous speaker, spoke about child and maternal health, something we can all agree is an absolutely vital outcome of our aid work. How cutting $4.5 billion from our aid budget actually promotes child and maternal health is a little beyond me. Our programs reduce infant mortality rates, provide life-changing surgical procedures and fight common diseases. The infrastructure provided through our aid program in the Pacific lays powerlines to remote communities and builds roads, which opens communities to the outside world and to the very economic opportunities the previous member spoke of.

In the education sector we build schools, train teachers and fight to close the gender gap in classrooms. In Indonesia we have been building schools with ramps so that for the first time kids with disabilities can get into the classroom and get an education. These programs are essential, life-changing and life-saving services. These services are delivered to our neighbours and are in our best interests as well as theirs.

In addition to those poverty alleviation programs, our aid program supports sustainable economic and social development. These are programs which push for gender equity in development and reduce domestic violence. The member for Kingsford Smith spoke very movingly about our visit to the Vanuatu Women's Centre, which is another recipient of Australian aid. Since 2007 it has helped more than 10,000 survivors of family violence with counselling, legal assistance and accommodation and has worked to improve educational and economic outcomes for women.

In Solomon Islands we met the Acting Commissioner of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force, Juanita Matanga. Her position and her story are representative of a changing society where women have more choice and opportunity. Her story demonstrates a changing society not only where development is represented and measured in economic terms but where our aid funding directly drives this positive change across the society of Solomon Islands.

We did not visit PNG on this trip, but our aid dollars there make such an enormous difference. Between 2004 and 2011 the number of women appointed to village courts increased from 10 to 1,000. At the end of 2011 there were 700 women working as magistrates and 300 working as clerks and peace officers. Aid funding went toward an awareness and training program responsible for increasing this number of women magistrates. You can imagine the huge change they make in a culture where sexual assault and domestic violence are so prevalent. Also in PNG aid programs have funded measures to improve the safety of public spaces, particularly marketplaces where women were being raped regularly when taking their goods to market. This program makes it possible for women subsistence farmers to take their goods to market and sell them safely for the economic benefit of themselves and their families.

These programs are examples of the nation-building work our aid program has done. They are programs which enable our neighbours to build the economies and societies that everybody deserves to have. They are in our best interests as well as in the best interests of our neighbours, because peace, security and better health services in our region benefit Australians as well.

Unfortunately, the government has made a series of choices that threaten the aid sector entirely. We have lost the expertise of those AusAID staff who have lost their jobs as they have been merged with DFAT. We have removed poverty reduction as an aim of the aid budget. The foreign minister's announcement of $61.4 million of cuts in the Pacific and $650 million in cuts in the first year of the aid program alone has dealt a devastating blow to the work we do. These cuts will return Australia to the historic low levels of funding under the Howard government. Instead of moving progressively to 0.5 per cent of gross national income it will fall to 0.32%— (Time expired)

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the importance of providing efficient and effective aid to our Pacific neighbours, and our role in maintaining order and prosperity within our region. At the last election, Australians saw the need to return to a proper, responsible and prudent government to put the nation's books back in order. Against that background, we can scrutinise our foreign aid system. It is time that we redefine how we measure the impact of Australia's foreign aid.

Instead of foreign aid being judged merely by the number of dollars spent, the key indicator of a project's success should be what is actually achieved on the ground. While there is no way of waving a magic wand and suddenly making all foreign aid more efficient and effective, there are a number of ways aid recipients, donors, workers, governments and the private sector can work together to improve the efficiency of our system. On occasions, the cost of aid delivery appears to outweigh the aid itself. While it is quite proper to try to protect the integrity of our aid system, we burden ourselves with the bureaucracy and inflexibility that can overwhelm the good intentions.

However, there are a number of effective partnership relationships to improve aid delivery, ranging from public-private partnerships to the whole question of social entrepreneurship. At least 80 per cent of today's assistance comes from non-public sources. This is up 30 per cent from 40 years ago, according to USAID's assistant administrator for global health. It is estimated that from an initial investment of $2.1 billion in public funds, USAID was able to leverage an additional $5.8 billion in private funds and contributions. From my discussions with Abt JTA, a private aid consulting firm doing some great work in Papua New Guinea, they believe that this point about leverage is crucial. There has been little effort in the past to use our aid program to leverage funds from others and develop collaborative partnerships, yet there is considerable potential to do so. William Easterly, a professor of economics at NYU, believes that it is important, especially for Western nations, to identify that development happens mainly through home-grown efforts. Easterly believes that the developed nations provide foreign aid and development programs through the lens of Western culture, with a focus on significant bureaucracy. He panned approaches that do not involve the people the services aim to benefit.

While I was in Papua New Guinea at the end of last year with the Australian Defence Force, I was inspired to some extent by a discussion with Sir Peter Barter and Father Jan Czuba, the president of Divine Word University, about the benefits of institution-to-institution support as an effective method of aid delivery. Father Jan has focused programs within the university to be primarily health and education based so that Papua New Guinean graduates contribute back to their community and fill areas where they are needed the most. Father Jan has focused primarily in these areas. Another example of a great success story is the PNG LNG project. This is not just as an infrastructure project. With companies such as Oil Search and other partners in that project, they are delivering aid in important areas such as TB awareness, HIV-AIDS awareness, and the crucial one of maternal mortality to the villages as the project passes through them. We have seen some significant improvements in health care delivery occurring in the PNG LNG project villages.

There are many avenues the Australian government can take to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our foreign aid. At the end of the day, value for our taxpayers' dollars is what it is about, and value for the beneficiaries of our aid.

Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Andrew Nikolic (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prior to entering parliament, I saw first hand the burdens and suffering of the unfortunate and impoverished, some of the things the member for Kingsford Smith talked about: in refugee camps in South Lebanon; closer to home in the Philippines, in the Solomon Islands and in Timor Leste; extreme poverty in Afghanistan and Iraq during deployments there in 2001 and 2005; and, in Southern Iraq in my role as chief of staff of the British-led division in Basra, included helping organisations like DFID, USAID and a variety of NGOs.

As a senior public servant, I managed my department's regional cooperation programs, some hundred million dollars every year, in building institutional strength in regional countries. Together, these responsibilities have confirmed for me the vital importance of our aid abroad. But our genuine sympathy from an aid perspective must always be balanced with our capacity to pay for and sustain our aid program. On that basis, those opposite should do less pious lecturing about aid and consider why our economic freedom of action has been diminished. The official record of the meeting that the member for Kingsford Smith refers to does not support his claims. But the budget papers support the following claims—Labor left a $47 billion deficit this financial year, a $123 billion in cumulative deficits across the forward estimates and debt due to peak at $667 billion. I ask: where were their fine words about devastating effects on women and children when their party removed $5.7 billion from the forward estimates of the aid budget in the last 15 months of the 43rd Parliament—cuts, by the way, that Labor never took to an election?

Why did Labor break their promise three times to increase the aid program to 0.5 per cent of gross national income? Why was it okay for Labor to rip $375 million from the aid budget to pay for their cost blow-out in the immigration budget? Where is the national interest assessment in justifying Bob Carr's spending on rhinoceros programs in Sumatra and re-building Grenada's parliament? How could Libya be so important to Australia's national interests to justify Australia being the third largest donor to Libya during the Libyan crisis, behind the EU and the United States of America?

Where is the logic in Labor objecting to our refocussing of aid, trade and diplomatic efforts to our own backyard? After all, that is what we promised at the 2013 election, it is where our primary national interests are and it is where we have the most capacity to make a difference. Our job is to stabilise the aid mess that Labor has left us.

In the current financial year, the Australian government will spend $5.042 billion on aid—that is, only $107 million less than was spent on aid in 2012-13. Unlike Labor, this government made clear before the election its policy of saving $4.5 billion from the aid budget over the forward estimates. We also promised to implement the aid effectiveness recommendations from Labor's own review after the 2010 election. From next financial year, the aid budget will grow each year in line with the consumer price index. As one of the most generous aid donors in the world, we will provide greater stability and certainty to aid organisations. We will prioritise sustainable economic development in recipient countries because, as the chairman of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee has said, 'Development assistance is good, but economic growth is even better.' Foreign aid is the hallmark of a generous, tolerant nation. But—and herein lies the rub—it must be affordable, sustainable, and consistent with our national interests. Our aid program must be underpinned by a strong culture of accountability, so that waste is eradicated and Australian community support is maintained.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, aid should be directed at helping recipient nations become more independent, not miring them further in dependency. That is why it is called aid, not charity—because well-directed aid supports constructive outcomes. There is no more constructive an outcome than a nation becoming self-sufficient through its own economic growth. I commend these ideas to and I thank the House.

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and resumption of the debate will be made in the order of the date for the next sitting.