Alexander Downer (Mayo, Liberal Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Ryan for his excellent contribution. Firstly, I can give him some numbers. We will be spending an estimated $332 million on assistance to Papua New Guinea during the course of this year. This money is increasingly focused in areas such as governance. As the honourable member will know, we have established the Enhanced Cooperation Program with Papua New Guinea. That involves sending not as many police as we had originally hoped; we were hoping to have police on the beat. That was impossible to do as a result of a challenge in the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea. It is simply too complicated to change the constitution to provide for the legal protections that our police would need. Nevertheless, we have a considerable police presence there and that is being enhanced. In fact, only yesterday I met with Ministers Willie and Kimisopa from Papua New Guinea. We are taking a number of different initiatives to enhance our police cooperation and contribution. In the area of law and order, under the auspices of the Enhanced Cooperation Program, we are providing very significant additional assistance to Papua New Guinea.

Law and order is a big issue around the Pacific. In the rest of the Pacific we are spending around $434 million and are providing a lot of support, particularly to local police forces, to improve their capacity. In Fiji, for example, the police commissioner is an Australian, Andrew Hughes, whom some members here—I think the member for Maribyrnong—may have met. Andrew Hughes is doing a simply outstanding job. We have the police commissioner in the Solomon Islands, who is doing what could only be described as a courageous job, and a number of Australian police are helping in countries around the South Pacific.

We have also been focusing very much on governance. One of the arguments that we put in our white paper on aid, and one of the arguments I have made for a very long time, is that the reason many countries are struggling is that they are badly run. It is as simple as that. It needs to be said and it needs to be understood. How can we help? We can help to improve the quality of governance. We have a series of programs around the Pacific in which Australians are assisting in improving the operation of government departments and the operation of service delivery mechanisms, particularly in areas like health, education and so on.

The last point I want to make is that it is probably worth reminding the Committee that we are in the process of establishing an Australian technical college for the Pacific, and we will have more to say about that soon. I know members opposite favour the labour mobility proposal. The Labor Party’s position—and I think I have this right—is to allow unskilled workers from the Pacific to come to Australia. I think we should have more of a debate about that because it does not sit very comfortably with the new position of the Leader of the Opposition to keep migrants out of Australia. In relation to the Pacific very specifically, this is a position where we bring people in. I do not think the public know enough about that, but I am sure I will find the opportunity during the next week to draw their attention to it.

We think the challenge is not to bring unskilled labour into Australia; we think the challenge is to improve the skills of the people in the Pacific and to set up a technical college there. We have not announced yet where the college will be located or the detail of how it will work, but we have done a lot of work ourselves on that and will have more to say about it soon. I think that will make a very solid contribution to improving the capacity of the people in the Pacific to build their economies and build their welfare.

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