Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answer by Senator Evans to Senator Coonan’s question during question time today. I would firstly like to advance the proposition that Senator Hurley really is missing the point. The context of Senator Coonan’s question is to with the broader question of the government’s approach to foreign affairs and international relations and their general handling of the manner and approach that the Prime Minister is taking—which has the capacity to cloud relationships and to cause Australians and Australia some significant concern at a time of international crisis. I think that is the very important point which Senator Coonan was advancing.

We are in the middle of a global financial crisis which poses a real and present danger to the continuing development of many countries in the world. The concerns we raised, which Senator Coonan advanced in part in her questioning of the minister, were about the level of attention that the government has actually paid to the threat posed to the developing nations in our region in particular and the potential to set back the progress which has been made.

The World Bank report, which was made available at last weekend’s meeting, has delivered a particularly disturbing assessment of the global financial scene, warning that many developing nations are headed into a new danger zone. That report delivers on the very significant fears across the developed financial markets about a developing world into which so much effort has been put in recent times to look at measures and reforms by which greater economic stability can be achieved. The World Bank report is not alone though; there is also a recent report from the IMF. Let us take as an example the impact of the global financial crisis on Africa, a continent which this government says it intends to take a greater interest in—and we are waiting with interest to see where that will be played out. A senior official of the IMF has recently predicted that Africa will also be very hard hit by the financial turmoil that is being felt throughout the world. The IMF director for the Africa region, Antoinette Sayeh, has said that sub-Saharan Africa is now more vulnerable to the crisis because the food and fuel price shock has already caused higher inflation and rising current account deficits. That leaves them in a particularly vulnerable situation.

Where does that leave the rest of the world in trying to assist in the achievement of, for example, the Millennium Development Goals? I remind the chamber of the Millennium Development Goals, which are in place for achievement by 2015: the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger; the achievement of universal primary education; the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women; the reduction of child mortality; improvements in maternal health; the combating of HIV-AIDS, malaria and other chronic diseases; ensuring environmental stability; and a global partnership for development. These are eight absolutely pivotal and important goals for the world, and they are particularly significant in this region. We must contemplate these challenges in the midst of the global financial crisis and at a time when a General Assembly meeting on the Millennium Development Goals was effectively lost in the myriad conversations and discussions about the global financial crisis. This is perhaps understandable but it is, nevertheless, extremely frustrating for those who are trying to support the developing world. This is about not only supporting the developing world to achieve the Millennium Development Goals but also potentially, in the context of the global financial crisis, supporting them to continue to survive.

So what are the concerns? There is concern about the capacity of the developed world to continue to support the developing world as economies contract. As participation in the economic toing and froing of the daily markets has become so much more difficult, where does that leave developing nations? There is concern about the capacity of the developing world to manage its way through this. These are issues that we discussed with AusAID at estimates. They spoke about the work that they are doing within our region. They are speaking with our neighbours—countries which face enormous challenges and are already struggling very significantly to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Even aid agencies in Australia are concerned—and they said as much last week—about whether Australians are going to continue to make donations at the level that they have been making them as they begin to feel the constraints that the global financial crisis brings upon them. So we need to examine this in the context of how seriously the government is advancing those concerns and addressing those matters.