Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome everyone in the gallery and I wish you all the best in your endeavours. I think you were here for a dinner last night, and now we will hear from the Prime Minister. I hope that you have had a very worthwhile trip and that you have been made to feel very much welcome.

This is an important bill and it is an important debate that we need to have in this chamber because, at its heart, we are talking about $120 million of taxpayers' money. That is Australians' money that is earned through hard work. That is $120 million that we as lawmakers need to ensure is spent in the best way possible, and that is the debate that we are having in this chamber today.

I congratulate the member for Throsby for bringing up the parable about the help that is given by a stranger to someone who is lying destitute and robbed on a road. I think all of us in this place recognise that there is a place for us as a nation to take steps to make sure that other citizens of the world are given a hand and are helped, especially those in desperate need. Both sides of parliament are committed to ensuring that that happens. It is why we have, on the whole, a very bipartisan approach to our aid budget and how it should be spent. My understanding is that that bipartisan approach went as far as both sides supporting our withdrawing from the International Fund for Agricultural Development in 2004. There were very good reasons we did this; it was not a decision that was taken lightly. Withdrawing from a United Nations fund is not an easy process, but the reasons we did it are as follows: the fund's limited relevance to the Australian aid program's priority countries in South-East Asia and the Pacific, lack of comparative advantage and focus, the fact that other organisations are more strongly involved in rural development in our region, and shortcomings in management and failure to respond to concerns that the Australian government raised with senior management of IFAD—the International Fund for Agricultural Development—regarding how well our money was being spent.

The decision to withdraw was supported by the then Deputy Director General of AusAID in evidence that he gave to the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties.

According to the committee's report, AusAID had had concerns regarding IFAD's performance in relation to the Australian aid program and its priorities for a substantial period of time. A recent review of the International Fund for Agricultural Development and of Australia's engagement with it backed this assessment, stating that in 2004 these were clearly valid and important enough reasons for Australia to take the significant and protracted step of withdrawing from a UN organisation.

If we are to reinvest money with this organisation, having taken the steps that we did, it is beholden on us to ensure that this organisation has reformed its ways and will use the $120 million of taxpayers' money that will be put into this program in a way which will enhance our near region and those priority countries that we want to benefit from our aid budget, and that the money will be spent in the most efficient way to enhance the long-term sustainable development of those countries, particularly in agriculture. On this side of the House, we do not think that the necessary reforms and the necessary steps have been put in place to ensure that that will happen.

This is not a discussion about whether we should help our neighbours or not; this is about whether we are helping them in the right way, whether that $120 million will be used in the most effective and efficient way. It is a significant amount of money. This $120 million will be going back to this UN organisation at a time when the Australian government has cut its research and development budget for our agricultural producers. If we are going to be sending this money we have to ensure that it is used appropriately, because our agricultural producers are suffering cuts to their own research and development budgets. Therefore, at the very minimum, we have to ensure that if we are still going to be generous in the aid we provide to our near neighbours that aid is spent appropriately. Are we certain that this is the case? Sadly, no we are not.

At a public hearing on the bill on 20 October 2012, AusAID officials were unable to assure members of the committee that IFAD has addressed all these issues. I will quote from that hearing so that we have it very clear on the record that there are still doubts about this UN organisation's ability to use this money wisely. To an AusAID official, Ms Bryant, Mr Ruddock said:

Do you believe all of those concerns have now been addressed—

the concerns that led to us withdrawing from this organisation. Ms Bryant said:

I believe that the concerns have been well documented …

Mr Ruddock asked if she could quantify that all the concerns have been met. Ms Bryant said:

No. I am not sure how you would like me to quantify it. In terms of a list and a tick box, no, I cannot do that.

This comes when we have seen evidence of the mismanagement and the auditing issues around how this UN organisation spends money. Questions have been raised since 2004.

Is this the right way for us to be spending taxpayers' money? There are other ways that we can use this $120 million. There is no reason we cannot use direct aid programs to do this job. Australia has expertise in this area. We are world leaders, especially when it comes to dryland farming in agriculture but also when it comes to tropical farming. These skills can be utilised. We do not have to outsource every part of our aid budget to the United Nations. The more distant an organisation is from a country, the greater the chance that you will not see every dollar being utilised as it should be utilised.

I want to point to the IFAD 2011 annual report on investigation and anticorruption activities. Twenty-five allegations were made against external parties. Of these:

… 13 related to IFAD staff members, and three involved both staff members and external parties … The staff misconduct cases involved harassment, breach of confidentiality, recruitment irregularities and conflicts of interest, while the external cases involved collusion in procurement activities and other fraud on the part of companies and project staff.

The part that really concerns me is that the external cases involved collusion in procurement activities and other fraud on the part of companies and project staff. These are serious allegations, especially when it comes to collusion in procurement activities, because that is one of the fundamental roles of any aid organisation in making sure that the money it has and is putting towards aid projects is spent appropriately. So, if there is collusion in procurement activities, we should not be giving over $120 million to this organisation.

Let us just put that $120 million in perspective. The US government last year provided $80 million to IFAD. On a per-head-of-population basis, on a GDP basis or whichever way you want to look at it, we are giving a substantial sum of money to this organisation. These issues were raised once again when this legislation went before the committee. Mr Ruddock asked, 'Have there been any allegations of corruption within the fund?' The AusAID official replied:

Not that we are aware of. We understand that there are reporting mechanisms for corruption, but we are not aware of any making it to the executive council discussions. I think the report that we have commissioned, the 2011 report, looked at that issue and also did not identify any allegations of corruption. I am using the word 'allegations' here; there were certainly no cases.

That might have been before the IFAD 2011 annual report on investigation and anticorruption activities was released because, quite clearly, as the organisation's own report shows, 25 allegations were made, of which 13 related to IFAD, and they are significant allegations.

So I call on the government to re-examine its approach to IFAD and its approach to how it will spend this $120 million of taxpayers' money.

The cost of repairing all of the dodgy pink batts that were put into people's roofs was $120 million—a significant sum of money. We have already seen waste occur due to government incompetence and mismanagement of this amount of money and, sadly, even greater amounts in the last five years. But we do not want to continue to see it continue to happen. We have to ensure that we learn the lessons of the past and that the taxpayers' money is spent correctly, appropriately and in the most efficient way possible. That is as important for the aid budget as it is for any other part of government spending.

In conclusion, this debate is not about the allocation of money to our aid budget. This debate is ensuring that the taxpayers' money is well spent, and in this case it is $120 million of taxpayers' money—a significant amount. We should not be giving this money to this UN organisation until it gets its act in order or until it realises that we withdrew our funding from it in 2004 for very serious reasons. It was not a decision that was taken lightly. Therefore, we will not commit money back to this organisation until we are absolutely, 100 per cent guaranteed that that money will be used as it should be to benefit those countries that those dollars are going to.

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