DEVELOPMENT-AUSTRALIA: ‘Overseas Aid Too Self-Serving’

By Neena Bhandari Reprint | | Print |

Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, Apr 5 2007 (IPS) - Most Australians wants overseas aid to directly target poverty alleviation and sustainable development, but a majority of federal politicians favour pursuing the country’s national and commercial interests through the aid programme.

This dichotomy was revealed in a report launched by AID/WATCH, an independent monitor of aid, trade and debt in the region, at the News South Wales state Parliament House on Thursday.

Community members who responded to the AID/WATCH survey, on which the report is based, want improvements in both quantity and quality of Australian aid. Australia should donate more, but most importantly they want the aid allocated to meet the country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)commitment.

In September 2000, member states of the United Nations, including Australia, had agreed to work towards eliminating global poverty and hunger, to improve health, gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability and to create a global partnership for development or the eight MDGs.

MDG goals indicate that developed countries need to give around 0.5 percent of their Gross National Income (GNI) to overseas aid by 2010, and 0.7 per cent by 2015. The Australian government’s announcement of an increase in aid to 3.2 billion US dollars a year by 2010 will increase Australia’s overseas development aid to only around 0.36 percent in 2010.

In 2006-2007 Australia’s annual allocation of official development assistance is 2.3 billion dollars or 0.3 percent of GNI, which places Australia 19th on the list of 22 OECD countries.

There is broad support for what is essentially expenditure of tax-payer’s money. According to a 2005 poll commissioned by the country’s International Development Agency, AusAID, 91 percent of Australians support overseas aid.

AID/WATCH has been raising concerns about the manner in which the Australian Government delivers aid, believing that it has diverged significantly from the traditional humanitarian purpose that many people associate with aid, focusing mainly on the conditions for economic growth.

Eighty percent of Australian aid contracts continue to be allocated to Australian private companies, where profits boomerang back to Australia rather then remain in the aid recipient country. Recent evidence of Australian Wheat Board (AWB) executives receiving AusAID contracts to further the Australian wheat trade in Iraq is seen as just the tip of the iceberg.

The second concern the report raises is the focus on Australia’s national and regional security in relation to Pacific Island nations. So called ‘governance’ programmes in recent years form as much as 36 percent of Australian aid allocation and comprise major law and order interventions such as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) and the Enhanced Cooperation Package (ECP) to Papua New Guinea; and in the finance and justice sectors of aid recipient governments in the name of ‘strengthening governing institutions’.

Sarah Maddison, author of recently released book, “Silencing Dissent” about freedom of opinion in the current political climate says, “This report represents the distance that exists between public perceptions of aid and the competing ‘interests’ that can be seen to dominate political thinking on how to manage Australian aid contribution of 2.4 billion dollars per annum.”

AID/WATCH makes several reflections in this report on the process used to prepare the latest Aid White Paper, released by the Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in April 2006. Maddison says: “The white paper process was designed so as not to require formal submissions from members of the public. Instead ‘consultation’ involved hand-picked roundtables with those who are already the financial beneficiaries of aid contracts. Public ‘consultation’ processes were carefully stage managed to avoid critical perspectives”.

The key finding of the report that parliamentarians are out of step with broader community attitudes to aid is reflected in the AID/WATCH survey. 71 per cent of parliamentarians agree with having ‘the national interest’ in the broader aid objective. This compares with only 14 per cent of community respondents. Furthermore, 64 percent of parliamentarians agree that Australia should promote its domestic industry through the aid program whereas only 11percent of community respondents agree to it.

Kate Wheen, Co-director AID/WATCH says, “This is a disappointing statistic, particularly at a time when relations with Australia’s aid recipients, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, are deteriorating. This research nails the fundamental problem with Australian aid, that it has no clear focus and is prone to respond to short-term strategic and commercial interests rather than long-term outcomes.”

The report recommends that there should be a separate cabinet level minister for ODA that must not be tied with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Wheen quotes the examples of Britain and the U.S.

The British government set a precedent in 1997 when its international aid agency, Department for International Development (DfID) became a separate government department with its own minister, of cabinet rank. This separation and independence also saw a significant increase in Britain’s aid programme and a strong new focus on poverty alleviation in Africa.

“This is a great model to follow. Currently, it’s the interests of cabinet, not the recipients of aid that dominate our aid program and this is a major structural flaw in the way aid priorities are conceptualised by government,” says Wheen, who compiled the report with Ben Swanton and Jess Wall of AID/WATCH.

A large gap exists between the capacity to give as a nation and what the Australian government actually spends on overseas development. According to World Vision Australia, “We are on average 76.9 percent richer than we were in 1971-72, but while every Australian is on average about 14,717 dollars better off; we only give 2.45 dollars more per person each year in government aid.”

Australia has a GDP of almost 25,000 dollars per person. In 2005, the United Nations Human Development report ranked Australia 3rd, second only to Norway and Iceland. The government claims to have increased its foreign aid in the past financial year, but critics say the foreign aid spending was moving towards counter-terrorism and security cooperation, deflecting asylum seekers and fighting wars.

Miriam Lyons, director of the Centre for Policy Development, a Sydney-based think tank says: “Too often Australian aid policy is based either on what we think is best for Australia or Australian companies. Instead it should reflect most people’s understanding of what aid really is – helping out a neighbour because they need it, not because of what you might get out of it yourself.”

“Even if we were to make Australia’s national interest the sole focus of our aid policy, our current attempts to impose a narrow-minded, one-size-fits-all view of what is best for other countries isn’t working,” Lyons said. Over the long term, even Australia’s interests would be better served by a more genuine attempt to involve the recipients of Australian aid in the decision-making about how that aid should be delivered.”