Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A few weeks ago I met with six very inspirational young adults from South Australia as part of the Micah Challenge. As many of my peers will agree, there is something incredibly inspirational about meeting the next generation of campaigners against injustice, today’s youth who want to change the world and who may well occupy these seats in years to come. During this meeting we spoke about their concerns for today and for the future—poverty, climate change and international aid issues—and what Australia can and should be doing to fight world poverty. According to figures released by UNICEF in early September last year, an estimated 8.8 million children died before they even reached their fifth birthday. While, thankfully, that is down from 12.5 million deaths in 1990, it is still far too many. An estimated 8.8 million children die a day which equates to more than 1000 deaths every hour from illnesses such as pneumonia, diarrhoeal diseases, malaria and malnourishment—conditions which you are most unlikely to die from in Australia.

Around 40 per cent of the total deaths of children under the age of five occurred in India, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I was staggered when the Micah Challenge group presented me with an armband used by aid workers to assess how healthy a child is or, in most cases, is not. It indicated far too visually how malnourished some children are. To say it was confronting is an understatement; it was quite sickening to see how small that armband was. From what I was told and from what I could see of the measurements on the armband, some children have arms so thin I could fit my thumb and forefinger around the circumference of it with room to spare. In today’s world, with today’s standards and advancements in health and technology, in medicine and education, quite simply this should not be happening.

Since overseas development assistance began almost 50 years ago, donor countries have given some $2 trillion in aid—an amazing figure until you compare it with the $18 trillion that was spent globally to bail out banks and other financial institutions in response to the global economic crisis. The contrast is astounding—and insulting when you think about it. It means that over the last 50 years the developed world has spent on aid just 11 per cent of what it spent last year alone propping up financial institutions, many of which collapsed as a result of sheer greed or through incompetence. Compare that with the amount we spend on aid, on trying to help people survive and on trying to give people basic food, shelter and medical assistance.

There are 1.4 billion people living in extreme poverty today. That means that they have less than US$1.25 a day, or about A$1.40, on which to survive. Every time I come across these figures, I am taken aback. But a lot of it comes down to common sense. Around 2.6 billion people lack access to adequate sanitation. They do not seek lavish bathrooms with the latest stainless steel appliances and marble benchtops; that is not the case at all. They just need to have a toilet. That would mean that they would not defecate on the street and hygiene would be improved. In turn, less disease would be spread, making for better health outcomes. It is about common sense, basic standards of living which we take for granted. For those living in extreme poverty, however, it would literally be life saving.

In this year’s budget, the government committed $3.8 billion towards international aid, which represents 0.34 percent of the gross national income. However, both the current and previous governments have affirmed aspirations towards achieving the goal of 0.7 per cent of GNI going towards aid. The catchphrase ‘Kevin 0.7’ has a nice ring to it when it comes to lifting the amount of overseas aid. That is what is needed to make a significant difference in world poverty, and Australia can be a leader in relation to this. That is what Australia should be committing and, given the amount of money that has been dished out in handouts and in bailouts, surely this comparatively small amount of money can be found to make a real difference in the world, and in our region especially.

It can be all too easy for people to forget those in poverty on the other side of the world or even in our region. As they say, out of sight is out of mind. But aside from human compassion, from an economic perspective it is in our interest to do what we can to help developing nations deal with this extreme poverty. These are the men, women and children who, one day, could become our trading partners. One day they will contribute to the global economy. We should therefore do what we can to help make a difference.

Another issue that has to be remembered is the impact of climate change. In and amongst all of our lengthy discussions and debates into strategies and measures, the impact of global warming on developing nations will be catastrophic. I do not want to get into the debate about whether it is anthropogenic or not. I happen to believe that it is anthropogenic but, even for those who are sceptical about the causes of climate change, the fact is that the impacts of global warming are real. According to a World Bank report released in September, developing countries will need to spend up to US$100 billion a year for 40 years from 2010 to combat the effects of global warming. An increase in temperature of two degrees could see an additional 1.8 billion people living in a water scarce environment by 2080 and an additional 400 million people exposed to malaria. And an increase of three to four degrees could result in 330 million people being permanently or temporarily displaced by flooding. Subsistence farmers in developing nations will likely lose their source of food and income, and warming seas will result in intense tropical storms. And, as controversial as Senator Heffernan can sometimes be in some of his views, I think he is absolutely right when he warns about the impact of a global food security crisis and about the number of climate change refugees we could see in years to come unless we deal with these issues immediately.

At the same time as we look for solutions to climate change, so too should we be helping developing nations prepare and protect themselves for the future. As I mentioned earlier, it was incredibly inspiring for me to sit around a table with six young people—Rohan Miegel, Seth Emery, Mel Foster, Tara Parker, Allison Gosnold and Ben Quilliam—to hear their aspirations for the future and to see through their eyes how much better the world could be. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals, established in 2002, are: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability; and to develop a global partnership for development. So what is Australia doing to ensure these goals are met? In an ideal world, if every OECD country contributed the equivalent percentage of gross national income its economy represents within the OECD, each of these millennium goals could be met. For example, Australia’s economy constitutes approximately two per cent of the combined OECD economies and so should contribute two per cent of its gross national income to development aid. That is, if we go beyond 0.7 per cent, we will actually make a huge difference in eradicating global poverty.

Of course, we do not live in an ideal world and so the international aid target has been downgraded; it is now calling on each OECD nation to make an effort towards allocating 0.7 per cent to overseas development aid. We are still only halfway there. We contribute just 34c for every $100. In fact, Australia ranks amongst the least generous aid donors, well below countries like Norway, Denmark, Ireland, France and the United Kingdom. We can debate endlessly about the pressures of the global financial crisis and about the moneys Australia has given towards international humanitarian crises, but we simply cannot afford to let our support for poverty reduction slip. May I say, again, that it was a real eye-opener to speak with these six Micah Challenge representatives from South Australia who, in their youth, are trying to remind us of what can sometimes be forgotten in the busy workings of this chamber and the other place. Of course we need to ensure the security, growth and stability of our own land, but we cannot and should not forget the bigger picture of the sort of world we want to leave behind for our children and our children’s children.