Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Federal/State Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the member for Riverina for her initiative in putting the matter of the Australian aid program on the agenda. I know her interest and commitment in this area. We have done a few things together around countries in our region. Following the recent tsunami, millions of Australians think global poverty and inequality are important enough to put up their own money every fortnight, every month and every year. The Make Poverty History campaign and the Millennium Development Goals show that young Australians in particular are very committed in this area. If we in this parliament and all governments can convince Australians that their aid dollar will work then they can be encouraged to support increased government efforts to tackle the problem of poverty, and that is a matter to which we need to address ourselves.

With more than 800 million people living in poverty, two-thirds of them in our region, the reduction of poverty should be the one true focus of the Australian aid program. The reduction of poverty benefits Australia’s national interest by creating a more secure world in which fewer people face desperate circumstances and appalling living conditions every day.

As the shadow minister responsible for international development assistance, I want to use this opportunity to call for a restoration of balance between the focus on poverty reduction—basic services like health and education, employment, assistance with governance and capacity building—and the focus on corruption. All those things need to be part of a package, but I think Australia as a nation has had the balance wrong in recent times and we need to tilt it back towards poverty reduction, basic services and employment.

It is very appropriate that we are discussing this today because ASPI, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has today put out a paper, by Roland Rich, which has a number of important things to say about this subject. I want to mention just two things in the time available. In his talk about capacity building, Roland Rich has raised what I think is a very important point: we need to do more about training the Australians we send overseas to assist. Many of the people who go out to do this job—many of them are my constituents because they are often Commonwealth public servants—find that people are well motivated and sometimes achieve excellent results. But, as a strategic policy objective, we have to fund more training for those people so that, to make sure we have enhanced quality assurance of the training that is provided, we are maximising the benefit of the hours, commitment and dollars that we are providing.

Roland Rich has also raised an important point about enhancing the role of the private sector in Australia in enhancing enterprise development in developing countries. His paper takes an innovative look at the way in which we can generate more employment opportunities and economic growth in developing countries and it warrants more research. I cannot say at the moment that I endorse everything he says, but he is making a very important case and it deserves to be looked at.

I welcome the member for Riverina’s focus on the enhanced role of women and the relevant Millennium Development Goals on which our aid projects need to focus. All the evidence shows that investment in women’s health and education is the best form of effective investment in economic development—and in national and social development. Most of the money in microcredit goes to women for two very simple reasons: they are best at paying it back and they make best use of it for economic development and to assist their families. Finance providers give microcredit to women not because of issues of gender equity; they say that recognising gender equity means that you give more money to women because it works better and they pay it back more. For those reasons I think that that element of the focus and the whole question that the UNFPA has been talking about—dealing with gender equity and overcoming gender discrimination—is fundamental. We squander the fundamental investment in human capital if we do not get rid of gender discrimination.

I welcome the improvements in the aid program in the recent white paper and the Prime Minister’s commitments. We have had 10 wasted years, but we do have an improvement now. I urge an enhanced policy focus on the Millennium Development Goals. If the government gets the focus right, Australians of good heart will support them.

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