Promise on foreign aid broken

THE Australian government has been widely criticised by humanitarian organisations and ‘independent’ politicians over its broken promise on overseas aid in the budget handed down by Treasurer Wayne Swan on Tuesday.
Former prime minister Kevin Rudd had made a commitment – as part of efforts to meet the millennium development goals – to increase Australia’s aid budget to 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) by 2015-16, but the government now says it will do this a year later.
The government says the delay will save about A$2.9 billion (K6 billion) over the next four years. The measure was among a raft of spending cuts implemented across government as part of the Gillard government’s determination to deliver a budget surplus this year.
There is no significant increase in the aid allocation to PNG (A$492 million) for this year, behind largest recipient Indonesia, which will receive A$578 million.
Amid accusations of “creative accounting” and “cooking the books”, the government could only manage a very modest surplus of A$1.5 billion for 2012-13, and foreign aid was one of the casualties of Swan’s ‘razor gang’.
The aid budget will still increase by around A$300 million to about A$5.15 billion this financial year, but it will remain static as a percentage of GNI at 0.35. In simple terms, that’s 0.50% translated to 50 cents for every A$100 of GNI. Surely, even that is a relatively small amount that Australia should well be able to afford.
Only last month, the International Monetary Fund said Australia’s economy was the strongest in the developed world and was likely to remain so for at least the next two years.
PNG, on the other hand, despite its own minerals and petrochemicals boom, still ranks among the world’s poorest nations.
The majority of Australian aid goes to countries in the Asia-Pacific region, where, coincidentally, the majority of the world’s poorest people live and where aid is most needed.
Many children in poor countries don’t make it past their first birthday simply because of where they are born. An accident of birth!
Swan has staunchly defended his budget, but it has to be seen in the context of record revenues pouring into the government’s coffers thanks to the mining boom.
The broken promise is a huge disappointment to many in the aid sector who were lobbying hard for the government to deliver on Rudd’s pledge.
World Vision Australia chief executive Tim Costello was blunt in his criticism of the government’s decision, saying it could result in the loss of more than 200,000 lives.
“It sounds very dramatic but aid saves lives,” Costello told Sky News, but Swan dismissed the claim as “just ridiculous’’.
Oxfam Australia head Andrew Hewett said he was “deeply disappointed’’ by the government’s broken promise.
“This delay in aid spending means fewer people will have access to clean water, sanitation, education and health care,’’ he said.
Unicef Australia said millions of children risked being pushed back into poverty, while ActionAid Australia said it was “dismayed’’ by the budget decision.
Save the Children described it as a “dark day’’ for poor children.
Independent crossbench MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott also expressed their disappointment, along with new Australian Greens leader Christine Milne. (Milne replaced Greens veteran Bob Brown as party leader when he stepped down late last month).
“The global community and our nearest neighbours will take a dim view of Australia going back on its word,’’ Milne said.
Left wing lobby group GetUp accused Swan of displaying a “moral deficit’’ on foreign aid funding.
“(The) budget surplus has been delivered on the backs of the world’s poor,’’ its spokesman, Simon Sheikh, said.
Vision 2020 Australia’s chief executive officer Jennifer Gersbeck said the delay would significantly affect the lives of millions of people who were needlessly blind or vision-impaired in the Asia-Pacific region.
“This budget is a real blow for the poorest of the poor,’’ she said.
“With 80% of blindness and vision loss preventable or treatable, the delay meant fewer people could have access to sight-restoring surgeries, eye screenings and spectacles,” she said.
“People who are blind or vision-impaired in the Asia Pacific are invisible in the pages of this budget.’’
Foreign Minister Bob Carr, however, defended the budget, saying slowing the aid increase was a tough but fiscally responsible decision.
The government says the new timeline will still make it the sixth largest aid donor in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) by 2015-16. Carr also announced the introduction of a new Comprehensive Aid Policy Framework, to guide the aid programme’s growth over the next four years.
Since the Rudd government came to power in 2007, Australia’s aid spending has been a key component of the government’s campaign to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
The UN General Assembly will vote in new members of the UNSC later this year and Australia has long wanted a seat at the mother of all clubs.
The campaign’s motto is “Australia: We do what we say’’, but Greens leader Milne said the government’s decision had made a joke of that claim.
“We have promised in the international community we will meet 0.5% by 2015 and now we’re not going to,’’ she told the senate this week.
The opposition’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, said Labor’s broken promise this year meant it would  be “impossible’’ to achieve the target by 2015.
But she said the coalition remained committed to a foreign aid budget equivalent to 0.5% of GNI, without giving a timeframe.
Bishop is due to deliver a public lecture on “Australian aid, the Pacific and PNG’’ at the Australian National University on May 31, when she will outline the coalition’s views on the subject. Analysts and aid activists will be keen to hear what she has to say.

lSanjay Bhosale, a former associate editor of
The National, is a Canberra journalist.