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

I think, in the case of the two I am talking about, that is true—they did not on this last occasion—but who are delighted by this part of the budget and support it. Actually, it took place in South Australia, I am pleased to tell you. They were not from Barker but they were from a very conservative electorate. They did not vote for my party but they think this part of the budget is morally right, is politically right and, I would add, has some significant longer term national interest factors.

I was delighted with the response, for example, at a forum organised by my colleague the member for Kingston. We had a really interesting discussion with a range of people in the community about the strengths and merits of the budget and where it fits in the long term. What the budget papers show, of course, is that in this budget there is a significant improvement in our development assistance funding. We have lifted the ratio of ODA spending to gross national income to 0.32 per cent. While it is still terribly low, significantly this is the highest it has been since 1995-96, when the Labor Party went out of office. The forward estimates show it rising to 0.38 per cent, which will be the highest rate we have had for a very long time, going back to the 1980s. The Treasurer has recommitted us to our election commitment of 0.5 per cent by 2015, which would make our aid budget the highest it has been since 1974-95, as a percentage. We are on track for the biggest increase in the development assistance budget in our history.

When you look at that massive increase—nearly 10 years of scaling up to make up for how far we have fallen behind as a nation—you see that after those 10 years of scaling up, the biggest increase in our history, we will still be a long way below the leading countries in the proportion of our economic assets that are applied to assisting the poorest people. No developed country in the world lives more closely engaged geographically and economically with developing countries than Australia does, yet we have been trailing at the bottom of the pack for a decade in our contribution to development assistance. It is neither morally right nor economically or diplomatically sensible. So we are starting the process of remedying the historic failure of the previous government.

We are also in the process of implementing our election commitments. I will talk about these on subsequent occasions, but I want to mention them today because they are an important part of the pattern of the budget. There is a program which in the short-term will focus on the very important task of dealing with avoidable blindness in developing countries in our region, but it is a precursor to a broader program assisting people with disabilities in developing countries. There is a commitment to scale up assistance for projects around water and sanitation—unclean water and poor sanitation are two of the biggest killers, particularly of young people, in our region—and there is a commitment to assist developing countries to adapt to the challenge of climate change. All those were explicit election commitments that we said we would implement in our first budget, as we have, or that we said we would scale up in our first budget, as we have.

I want to spend the remaining time talking about a particular aspect of our development assistance challenge where we are seeking to not just repair our relationships but transform them. I have the privilege of working with my colleague the Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, Duncan Kerr, on re-establishing good relations with our neighbours in the Pacific, where they have been so badly damaged, and creating a new framework for the future. The Prime Minister has spoken of Pacific Partnerships for Development and he has given that tangible status in the Port Moresby declaration, which he issued during his recent visit to Papua New Guinea. That made significant progress towards repairing our relationship with that important neighbour.

Pacific partnerships for development are very important and the Prime Minister will have important things to say about them over the months to come. This budget makes an important contribution to positioning ourselves as a nation to implement those fine words. Fine words are important. They do matter in relationships, but actions matter more. That is why I want to refer to three specific major commitments in this budget. Only two of them I will be able to talk about in any detail. There is a Pacific regional infrastructure facility, an investment in Pacific public sector capacity and there is an initiative with regard to Pacific land issues.

Can I talk first about the question of Pacific public sector capacity. There is a new $107 million four-year initiative called Investing in Pacific Public Sector Capacity—only $6 million in this budget, scaling up over future years as we develop the framework for the policy. It is designed to strengthen public sector administration in the Pacific. This is not where I would have started before I became more closely engaged with this issue, but it is clear that one of the key constraints on the delivery of decent services to the poorest people in our region is the lack of capacity on the ground to develop policies and then implement them, to deliver services to the men and women of the developing countries of our region such that they get a better life. In the long term we are talking about better education for their kids, better health services and better job opportunities, but we need to create the capacity of the governments to set a framework where that can happen and where the government itself is delivering the services—so that it can be done efficiently and effectively.

We are not going to change this overnight, but we do have a commitment to work with the governments, the tertiary institutions and the training institutions in the region, to build up public sector workforce performance, to enhance the regional training institutions that produce graduates and to enter into twinning, mentoring and similar arrangements so that we will foster strong people-to-people and organisational linkages, which will be good for our relationships, will enhance the partnerships and will also strengthen public service capacity in our region. We will be particularly focusing on training for all levels of the public service—for entry level public servants and for mid-level public servants as they start taking on responsibility, and with specialised programs for the current and potential leaders of the public sector, including formal and on-the-job training and work attachments in Australia and within the region. It is not the glamorous side of development assistance but it is a fundamental thing that we need to do and is an initiative of which I am proud.

The Pacific regional infrastructure facility is something we intend to do initially with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, but we are trying to create a framework where other significant donors in the region, such as the European Union, Japan and possibly China, will come together to contribute within a coherent framework for the regional development of infrastructure. I am not talking just about region-wide infrastructure but infrastructure country by country, economy by economy, in some instances competing across the region to see whose infrastructure proposals have the highest return—economic, social, environmental—so as to develop performance linked support to the basic infrastructure services, in combination with the multilateral development banks and potentially with other donor partners. We are very interested in enhancing the quality of the analytical work that underpins funding allocation and to do it in a manner that is comprehensible locally. It is no good creating a sophisticated black box into which data is put and from which recommendations emerge with nobody understanding the linkage, the criteria or the basis on which they have been made.

We are keen to do that and I have been pushing very hard to make sure that, in addition to the things which we ordinarily think of in infrastructure investment—such as building new roads and new structures—we focus on maintenance. It is the untold story of development assistance around the world—build, degrade, replace. We are not going to continue to do that. Neither is it efficient use of money nor does it send the right economic signals to people whose behaviour we want to change. We want to build these roads so that people will increase production and take it to market on the improved roads that we have supplied. If there is no confidence that the road is going to stay useful for more than five years, you are not going to invest in increased production to take advantage of the market opportunity. We want to look at enhanced analysis and performance links for the basic infrastructure we build. We want to build incentives into the contracts and the mode of operation to ensure that the maintenance is undertaken.

I am please to have the opportunity to speak in support of this budget. As the member for Fraser, I am very pleased to see the things which have emerged within my constituency. As a member of the Labor government, I am pleased to see the national economic responsibility and benefit that is flowing. As the Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, I am pleased to see the manner in which this budget has created the foundation on which we can transform our relationship with the countries of our region, discharge our obligation and serve our interests as a generous, intelligent donor participating as a responsible international citizen in the task of achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

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