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

I do not wish to generate disorderly conduct in the chamber, Mr Deputy Speaker. The numbers have changed in relation to Papua New Guinea because of the anticipation that we were going to deploy police, including into community policing positions, so that was built into last year’s budget. Of course, we were not able to do that, so that expenditure is not going to take place. We would not just spend money willy-nilly on anything; we had the money set aside for that and the program has been much reduced, and that is the explanation. If you take the overall expenditure on the Solomon Islands, of course, I think you will find that, regardless of what the budget numbers say, there has been a rather substantial surge in expenditure in the Solomon Islands as we have deployed quite a number of Australian Defence Force members and, from recollection, we have had to deploy an additional 70 or so police, mainly but not exclusively from the Australian Federal Police. So we will have to look at those numbers in time, but we are not running general cuts in the budget to those countries.

In the context of providing aid, I am not of the view—as are, in particular, people on the political left around the world—that the measure of success is the amount of dough you spend. The measure of success is the efficacy of the programs you run, not how much they cost. You have to provide money to run the programs, but the benchmark for good aid should be good and successful outcomes and a tightly focused program, not just unloading bucket loads of money into the Third World. On many occasions, as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund and I were agreeing yesterday, it can actually cause quite substantial economic problems for a country if you just unload too much money into that country. For example, it can have significant exchange rate implications, thereby in fact having the effect of undermining its economy.

The honourable member raises some very important points about the Solomon Islands more generally. Suffice it to say that we have been concerned about its economy. My recollection is that in 2003 the Solomon Islands’ GDP—somebody may correct me here—declined by about 14 per cent in that one catastrophic year. In the last year, though, the Solomon Islands’ GDP grew by around four per cent. On the face of it, the honourable member might think that that is not such a bad figure and he might be pleased to hear that, and he should be. But it is not a great figure, because, to put that into some context, the Solomon Islands became independent in 1978. So, if you take 1980 as the benchmark for the Solomon Islands economy and work on the basis of a four per cent rate of growth—and, of course, there will be some disruption to economic growth caused by the events of a couple of months ago—the Solomon Islands’ per capita GDP will not return to what it was in 1980 until 2025. That is quite an alarming figure, so the honourable member is quite right to point to some of these issues and ask from where it will generate its economic growth.

Obviously, industries such as the timber industry, sustainably developed, and tourism have good potential—tourism has great potential in the Solomon Islands. If they could reopen the Goldridge mine, that, of course, would have a very substantial impact. That is potentially a good mine, but the political issues surrounding the mine need to be resolved. Solomon Islanders have to play a key part in resolving that, but those issues are being worked through and there is some prospect of that mine reopening. The mine made a major contribution to Solomon Islands’ GDP. I think it contributed a quarter or a third of its GDP; it was something in that vicinity. I think it has very good prospects. I can see my time is running short, so I will leave it there.

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