Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Kooyong has every right to be outraged. In terms of priority, what is AusAID doing to ensure the foreign aid money is being spent at the coalface, on the people who need it the very most?

I would like someone to explain to me how this statue will assist people in need in Africa and in the Caribbean. Let us have a look at another one: $270,000 for reviewing agriculture and fisheries management in Eritrea between 2008 and 2010. I wonder how the Australian seafood industry feel about that one after Minister Burke's recent announcement that he wants to lock away more of Australia's fishing grounds. What tangible benefits have been delivered to the Eritrean fishing industry as a result of this money? Then there was $300,000 in 2009 for membership of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kenya. This must be one of the most expensive membership fees around. What tangible benefits has this funding allocation delivered? Maybe we will get some clarity from this one: $65 million for a giant telescope project in Chile's Atacama Desert. Other than being a very expensive gadget for ET to phone home, why was this funding allocation a priority for AusAID, and why did AusAID not make a determination that this money could be spent much more productively in our own region—for example, by tackling the TB epidemic in PNG?

If this $3 billion aid increase in foreign aid spending in Africa, the Caribbean, South-East Asia and the Pacific supposedly has nothing to do with the UN Security Council bid, what has changed so much about Australia's foreign aid priorities between 2007 and 2008? Why has there been an increase of 251 per cent in how much we are spending in Africa? That has gone up from $101 million to $354.6 million between 2007-08 and now. Equally, other than the apparent need to build a statue in New York, what has changed so much about Australia's foreign aid priorities since 2007-08 that we have increased our foreign aid spend in the Caribbean from zero to almost $48 million in 2012-13?

But the most important question is: how much has Australia's future foreign aid focus been skewed by the success of our bid? In recent estimates, under questioning from Senator Kroger, AusAID Director General Peter Baxter admitted that there had been separate buckets of funding across a range of government agencies for the delivery of projects of foreign countries which just happened to coincide with the timing of the UN Security Council bid. Mr Baxter made this admission while at the same time trying to claim that Australia's foreign aid budget had not been impacted by the Security Council bid.

But what I find really confusing about all of these statements is that this dynamic must cause significant problems for AusAID, with the apparent lack of coordination in the allocation and expenditure of consolidated revenue for the delivery of projects in foreign countries which are in effect foreign aid projects. An obvious matter of concern is that this lack of coordination creates inefficiencies in that AusAID and other government agencies could well be duplicating expenditure or acting at cross-purposes, therefore decreasing the level of Australia's foreign aid effectiveness.

It seems very clear from the analysis of the budget papers going back to 2007-08 that the level of foreign aid Australia provides in our own region has been hijacked to facilitate the Security Council bid, and it is indeed telling. It is demonstrated by the following facts: the percentage of Australia's foreign aid budget spent in the Pacific, including New Guinea, has decreased by 4.5 per cent between 2007-08 and now, and the percentage of Australia's foreign aid budget spent in East Asia, including Indonesia, has decreased by five per cent between 2007-08 and now. What we have seen since 2007-08 is a 251 per cent increase in Australia's level of aid to Africa, while we have record levels of tuberculosis infection in PNG and a failed $170 million program to combat AIDS and HIV in our nearest neighbour.

While the coalition welcomes Australia's appointment to the Security Council, it is very clear that we do not have a plan. We have splashed money all around with little or no way of design or strategy. In conclusion, the coalition urges the government to focus on our region and not to squander the opportunity that has been made available.

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