Foreign aid dropped from agenda
By Joseph O'Reilly
With domestic economic issues dominating the federal election, overseas aid and foreign policy relating to human rights have been dropped off the agenda altogether.
However, the quantity and quality of Australia's aid deserve discussion and debate.
Australia's responsibility in assisting the world's poor is a vital element in generating an equitable distribution of wealth on an international basis. However, this is not the primary application of Australian aid.
According to leading aid agencies, the world's poor are worse off under recent changes to Australia's aid budget. The focus of both Labor and Coalition aid policies has resulted in humanitarian concerns competing with commercial and political interests for the aid dollar.
The focus of Australia's overseas aid program has increasingly become commercial, with only 2% of an already small aid budget going to direct poverty alleviation.
The Australian Council for Overseas Aid has identified a program of reform which includes giving priority to women, children and environmental sustainability in aid programs.
When the UN set a target of 0.7% of GNP as the level at which all aid donors should aim, both Labor and Liberal said that they were committed to reaching it. But neither will say how or by when.
In practice, the performance of successive Australian governments in this regard has been dismissal. Until the most recent budget, Labor has cut aid each year. Official Coalition policy in Fightback outlines a $209 million cut from the aid budget. This would bring our aid level down to around 0.3% of GNP.
Democrat policy is for an immediate increase in aid to 1% of GNP, with the goal of 2% in the longer term. The Democrats have also called on the government to direct aid towards poverty alleviation, community health and the promotion of ecological sustainability.
The fact that aid policy makes a minuscule contribution to redistributing global wealth has led some commentators to suggest that the issue is irrelevant. However, any move to further diminish its effect on community development must be resisted.
A real recognition of the principle that the world's prosperous nations have a moral obligation to give whatever assistance they can to those less fortunate would result in a variety of strategies for generating international equality, which would go well beyond the concept of aid. In the meantime, every effort at making our existing programs socially and environmentally responsive and sustainable is a reasonable starting point.