No. 30, 28 April 2006
by Ben Thurley
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer released the long-awaited White Paper, Australian Aid: Promoting Growth and Stability on Australia’s Aid Program, in a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday. Here are some initial thoughts on the document.
What’s good about it?
While there are no numbers, nor much detail on specific programs (a White Paper not being the place for either), it seems that the biggest spending increases are to be on health and education - which is fantastic. The paper mentions a doubling of funding to health programs and a tripling of funding to education programs by 2010 – which, I think, excludes the extra scholarship places being created.
This is good, because in aid budgets since 2000, funding for these basics of health and education has stagnated, while funding for governance (law and order, etc.) programs has skyrocketed. This will go a long way to rectifying that set of skewed priorities.
The focus on health and education has a strong emphasis on the health and education of women and children, in particular. Initiatives to support and improve national education and health systems, combat malaria, HIV/AIDS are all either emphasised or foreshadowed in the White Paper. All aid is completely untied from the requirement that it be spent on Australian goods, serivces, companies or consultants.
The White Paper proposes an Office of Development Effectiveness to monitor and improve the effectiveness of aid. There is a strong overall emphasis on measuring and improving performance (particularly around anti-corruption) which is useful.
There is more emphasis on supporting and expanding civil society led governance programs and not attempting to impose a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model on governance and growth paths. There is great emphasis on further training and education, through drastically increased scholarship places and the founding of an Asia Pacific Training College.
And there is a welcome recognition of the importance of aid programs being fully owned by partners (from setting the priorities, to planning, to implementation) and, in line with the Paris Declaration, a willingness to contribute budget support, rather than simply implement projects.
What’s not so good about it?
Australia’s support for the Millennium Development Goals makes a rhetorical appearance only. Although support for (some of) the MDGs can be read implicitly in the section on Investing in People and support for water and environmental programs, they are in no way used to plan, measure or report on how our aid is contributing to sustainable poverty reduction in the region.
There is no sign of commitment to lifting our aid budget beyond the $4 billion by 2010 announced by the PM last year. Although the focus on monitoring and improving aid effectiveness may well provide a better platform to argue that these increases should flow to scale up our improved aid. Even after the increase, Australia will still be giving only around 0.36% GNI in aid and will be 18th or 19th out of 22 donor countries in terms of our generosity.
The document keeps referring to a doubling of Australia’s aid budget to $4 billion by 2010 (and a lot of the media have picked up on that line). Sure, it’s a numerical doubling on 2004 levels (when roughly $2 billion was spent), but it is not a doubling in real terms (factoring in inflation), nor a doubling of the current year’s budget ($2.5 billion). That being said, though, it’s a multi-year commitment to increase the aid budget and that’s very significant and welcome!
Although it recognises the issue, the White Paper’s focus on promoting growth doesn’t adequately address how economic growth is to be pro-poor (that is, its foundations equitably based and its benefits equitably distributed) nor environmentally sustainable.
Our environmental strategy includes a focus on supporting climate change mitigation and adaptation, without even remotely acknowledging that we are the biggest per capita greenhouse gas emitter in the world, and need to do much more to contribute to finding solutions.
The mission statement of the aid program has been updated to read: “To assist developing countries to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development, in line with AustraliaĆs national interest.”
The White Paper suggests that this will remove the ambiguity whereby it could be read that Australia’s national interest is more important to our aid program than poverty reduction and sustainable development. (The previous statement was Advancing the national interest by helping developing countries reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development.)
Now is it just me, or does the new statement not clear up any of the ambiguity at all?
Ben Thurley is Advocacy Coordinator for TEAR Australia. This article appeared on his blog site - http://tear.org.au/blogs/ben/?p=118, where you may post a response.
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Soundings is a publication of the Centre for Christian Ethics, edited by Rod Benson. Soundings welcomes submissions of up to 1000 words that seek to facilitate debate and explore issues of religion, ethics and public policy in Australia and internationally. Previous columns give a good indication of the topical range and tone for acceptable essays. Columns may be quoted or republished in full, with attribution to the author of the column, Soundings, and the Centre for Christian Ethics, Morling College, Sydney Australia. Views expressed in Soundings articles are not necessarily those of the Centre for Christian Ethics, Morling College or the Baptist Churches of NSW & ACT.
Monday, September 10, 2007
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