Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking to this address-in-reply so long after the election, I will not address my remarks, as I usually would, so comprehensively to the issues of my local area but principally respond to some matters in the budget. But I do want first to take this opportunity to thank the voters of the electorate of Fraser. I acknowledge their support; I am very grateful for their support. I accept without question that all the other things that I have the opportunity to do are dependent upon their continuing support. I have never taken it for granted, I do not take it for granted and I intend never to do so. I also take very seriously my primary obligation as a parliamentarian. I am proud to be a parliamentary secretary. I enjoy the work in executive government, the policy development and policy implementation. But all of that is secondary to the obligation I have as a member of this parliament. I enjoy being a parliamentarian and I take it seriously.

Before I get to the principal matter that I wish to raise, which goes to the issue of development assistance, I also wish to support the remarks of the Chief Government Whip. I was out of the country on the day of the Friday sittings so I cannot comment on the detail of what took place on that day, but I have always thought that the initiative of a non-government Friday was a significant enhancement of the rights of parliament and parliamentarians. The parliament does not just serve for the executive or for the front bench of the opposition, which I have just spent much too long being on. It serves the interests of members of parliament. The Friday without government business, which gave members who did not wish to participate the right to go back to their constituency, which is a geographic reality of our huge country, but others who wish to be here the opportunity to participate, was, in my view, a significant enhancement of the rights of members to raise issues—issues of concern to them or concern to their constituency or both. That it was destroyed in the way that it was is a great pity. I hope that we may be able to come back and rescue it on a future occasion.

But today I primarily want to take this opportunity to express my pride and optimism arising from the initiatives in this budget relating to the development assistance portfolio and to put them squarely within the context of the broader strategy of the Rudd government and then talk about the international context. If you look at the features of the initiatives in this budget, they are very responsible. There may be people commenting who wish we had done a lot more, and of course there is so much more to do that you cannot argue with the principle behind what they say, but we need to proceed with measured caution, consistent with efficiency and effectiveness of expenditure. So the budget accords with that responsible economic management and responsible government. It fits the budget and the Rudd government’s projection of the long term.

This initiative with regard to enhanced development assistance is not about transforming our relationships overnight, although in some countries we have done so already, or about transforming the living standards of the poorest people of our region overnight; it is about a long-term perspective. It is about new priorities against the old, tired politics of division and seeking to use international issues as domestic political wedges. It is about a new way of governing, about opening ourselves up to new ideas, as flowed from the 2020 Summit and as we are trying to do through the development assistance program—opening ourselves up to more people and more comment—and it is about fresh new ideas about how we might take Australia forward in the world. I am very proud of the initiatives and of the governance context in which they occur.

As I have said, some people have indicated that they wish we had done more—and let me quote one of the critics, not to attack them but to agree with them. Oxfam Australia are one of a number of very fine institutions doing great work in Australia’s name on behalf of the poorest people around the world, and the headline of their press release on budget night was ‘Rudd delivers on aid promises but Australia remains below international standards’. You might think I would be a bit upset about that; this is my area of responsibility and they are critical, but they are right. Both statements are correct: that we have delivered on our aid promises—and I am proud of that—but that we are starting from so far behind international standards that not only are we still behind them but after we make another increase next year and the year after, and the year after and the year after, we will still be below international standards. Oxfam say:

The Rudd government has honoured its pre-election commitment and delivered a modest increase of $500 million this year in its contribution to making poverty history ...

The sum of $500 million is not exactly right but it is broadly correct, and they are right: we have acknowledged—in fact, exceeded—the specific commitment we made about a first-year budget increase. But they go on to say:

However, Australian aid continues to lag behind other rich countries—

and that is right. The average effort of OECD countries contributing development assistance is 0.45 per cent of their gross national income. Even after this significant increase, we have got to 0.32. Let us recognise—and it is very significant when you think about the dates—that this increase to 0.32 of gross national income, so far behind international best practice as it is, is the highest level Australia has achieved since 1995-96; that is, since the last Labor budget. The government’s declared commitment, for which we are on track with this initiative, to reach 0.5 per cent of gross national income, when achieved, will be the highest level since 1974-75. It is in each instance a Labor government with an internationalist perspective and a recognition of the humanitarian significance and the national interest issues involved in commitments to development assistance that has set the benchmarks. We aspire to get back there and ultimately to go beyond it, but we are starting from such a low base. Oxfam went on to say:

... the budget will lift us off the bottom of the ladder of rich countries performance, but won’t get us anywhere near the top eight, let alone being top of the ladder as befits our leadership position in the region.

I could be offended by that but I in fact support it. They are right. We are starting a long repair job. It is going to take us a long time to repair the damage that has been done, but we have started the task.

I want to embed our initiative centrally within the international campaign to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. They are the international standards that the world has set for itself. The goals provide a clear vision for halving extreme poverty by 2015 and represent a unanimous intent by the international community to rid the world of poverty and improve the lives of those most in need. The milestones set down in the Millennium Development Goals provide a common focus for policy dialogue on poverty reduction efforts between developing country partners and donor countries. This helps to ensure that donor aid programs remain focused on achieving reductions in poverty. We want to make a new commitment to the achievement of those goals and to contributing what we can as a proud and developed country to assist our neighbours to achieve those goals.

What might have slipped past my description of the Millennium Development Goals—which was a fairly standard, orthodox description—but which is noteworthy is that these goals are a unanimous commitment by the world community. That means Australia signed up to them. But we did virtually nothing about contributing to this outcome. I do not want to say they did nothing, because for the first years of the Howard government we did less than nothing; we went backwards. But in the latter years two positive things happened, and it would be unfair of me not to acknowledge them. One was the white paper, which had some good ideas in it and was a step in the right direction. I do not agree with everything in it; it is not the signpost to the future that this government will use, but it was a substantial and positive contribution to the debate in this country about development assistance. The second was the commitment made in 2004 that by 2010 we would double our aid budget. Given the rate of our economic growth, that actually was not a very significant contribution but it was a step in the right direction. It reversed the long-term trend of decline, and I welcomed it. But it does not change the fact that we finished the period of the Howard government behind where we started. This budget for the first time gets us back there.

Let us have a look at these Millennium Development Goals. Everyone talks about the eight goals, but there are many more targets and a vast number of indicators. There are up to 18 targets and 48 indicators. I do not have time to talk about them all, and in my view they are not all equally important, but we need to have a more comprehensive look at the issues we are focusing on. At the core of it, it is about the fight against global poverty. That should be core business for Australia. Under the Rudd government it is core business for Australia in its own right. It is a fundamental obligation of a decent, developed country in the 21st century that we accept that we are part of the global campaign against world poverty. It is not a peripheral interest; it is not cause for occasional gratuitous commentary. It is core business for modern, 21st century developed countries and governments and we intend to restore Australia to that vast array—the majority of modern, Western, developed countries in the 21st century—making the commitment to those Millennium Development Goals.

It is unashamedly in our national interest. There is no reason to apologise for the fact that, while we are doing good, we are serving our own interest. There is no reason to apologise for that. The Prime Minister himself has commented:

It is in our own interests to tackle poverty in our region, as part of a wider strategy to deal with the impact of terrorism, climate change, pandemics and refugees on Australia.

It is unquestionably in our national interest. That would probably be sufficient motivation to do it. But we should never lose sight of the fact that primarily it is a contemporary obligation of a modern nation to be a part of the campaign against global poverty.

The second thing to recognise is that, even if we are to achieve the millennium goals by 2015—and globally we might, although regionally we will not—it is only the beginning of the task, not the end. Meeting target No.1, to ‘Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day’, would be a very significant achievement—and we might get there—but the obvious corollary is that half would still be left behind. We will have more to do after 2015, even if we achieve the goals.

As we began the task of restoring Australia’s standing and our commitment to the global goals to which we were a signatory in 2000—which we were notionally committed to for seven years, and which we are now absolutely committed to and engaged in—the Prime Minister committed us to the global call to action for the Millennium Development Goals. On his most recent trip, we joined that MDG call to action to galvanise widespread support, momentum and concrete action for the Millennium Development Goals. We are committed to it, and it fits within the context of our broader foreign policy, where we have the three pillars: the US alliance, our Asia-Pacific regional focus and our commitment as a good international citizen to multilateralism. The last two of those three pillars lead us to the Millennium Development Goals and to setting ourselves on the path to increase our development assistance from 0.3 to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015. That will take us in this budget to 0.38 per cent—approximately $5 billion—by 2011-12. We are at about 0.36 per cent this year and we have scheduled in this budget close to a 50 per cent increase, to be achieved by 2011-12. That is a big opportunity and a big responsibility.

I will talk about the budget measures in detail in this House and outside subsequently; today I want to emphasise that we have made this commitment because, as a government, we think the goals set down and adopted by the international community, including Australia, in the year 2000 remain valid today. We acknowledge that in the Pacific no country is on track to achieve all of those goals and at least one is not on track to achieve any of those eight goals. So we, as a nation in our region and the leading country in the Pacific, have failed, and it is time we acknowledged it directly and took seriously the task of remedying that failure. These are not extreme propositions: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger; achieving universal primary education; promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; combating HIV-AIDS, malaria, TB and other diseases; ensuring environmental sustainability; and developing a global partnership for development. This is not a revolutionary framework. This is about core common decency, applied internationally.

Our government will take a strategic approach to the entrenched causes of underdevelopment and instability, particularly in our region. We want Australia to become a leader in the fight against global poverty. We strongly support the millennium goals and our government is committed to helping developing countries achieve them. As I said before, on his recent trip Prime Minister Rudd announced that Australia has joined the MDG call to action—at last—to galvanise widespread support, momentum and concrete actions for the Millennium Development Goals. An important part of this will be an increased emphasis on basic education and on improving water and sanitation services. These are both focuses of the initiatives and funding allocation in this year’s budget.

We have, for example, committed to increase funding for water and sanitation by $300 million over two years from 2009-10. In this budget, sectoral increases are targeted very directly at the core Millennium Development Goals. Education programs are estimated to increase by five per cent to over $540 million; health programs are estimated to increase by eight per cent to over $440 million; expenditure on environment and climate change is estimated to increase by seven per cent to over $130 million; rural development expenditure—an area I think we will need to give more attention in future—is estimated to increase by seven per cent to over $160 million; and infrastructure assistance will be substantially scaled up to an estimated $380 million, an increase of 17 per cent.

It is not just about money; it is not only about making the program bigger but about making it better. But I am very proud that this 2008-09 budget lays the foundation for implementing the government election commitment to increase Australia’s official development assistance to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015-16. It is a building block in the government’s scaling up of Australia’s development assistance, with a projected nine per cent real increase in total ODA over the 2007-08 budget figure.

The budget includes a package of new measures designed to take forward the government’s development assistance priorities. In particular—a source of great pride to me—the budget gives effect to our election commitments about climate change, about eliminating avoidable blindness in this region and about improving access to clean water and sanitation. I am proud of the initiatives in the program. I am proud of the context in which they have taken place and I commit the government to an increasing focus on achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

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