Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

As my colleague the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has pointed out, this legislation, the Australian Civilian Corps Amendment Bill 2013, is essentially part of the administrative machinery designed to allow Australia's international development agency, AusAID, to be subsumed within the structure of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is a bill of no great complexity, but one that nevertheless enables a profound change.

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition has spoken about the aspects of the bill that deliver consequential amendments in relation to the Australian Civilian Corps—a Labor government initiative—and I support those remarks. I do want to make some observations in relation to the larger change being affected with respect to AusAID, some key aspects of which are also dealt with in this bill. As with the eloquent remarks just now from the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and the member for Canberra, I also want to take this opportunity to say some things about the work of AusAID the agency and about AusAID the people and the culture—points which I believe should be made on the occasion of its dissolution as a stand-alone agency.

The name 'AusAID' dates from 1995 but the agency itself came into being as the Office of the Australian Development Assistance Agency in December 1973, and I regret that we are not this month in a position to celebrate the agency's 40th birthday. But above all else I believe that it is important we recognise that there is a distinct Australian international development cause and project and that it is simply not possible for that cause and project to be wholly directed by, or even wholly consonant with, the legitimate but separate interests and purposes of Australian diplomacy and Australian trade.

The suggestion that through the work of AusAID Australia's international development assistance has somehow not been delivered in keeping with our national interest is wrong. The suggestion that Australian aid has not been focused appropriately in our region is wrong. Any suggestion that Australian aid has not been delivered with world-leading efficiency and effectiveness is wrong. Australia's development assistance has always been pursued in keeping with the national interest, primarily because making a real difference to the lives of people suffering from poverty and disadvantage, violent conflict and disease is an extension of our national character and of our national ethos. That is who we are. That is what we do.

It was some 64 years ago that Prime Minister Ben Chifley said:

We have a great objective—the light on the hill—which we aim to reach by working for the betterment of mankind not only here but anywhere we may give a helping hand.

The idea, therefore, that there is some stronger alignment that can be achieved, in the abstract, between Australia's aid program and our national interest is in my view a complete furphy.

Our international development assistance has been provided, first and foremost, to save lives and reduce poverty. In so doing it improves health and education outcomes, it builds economic capacity, it underwrites regional peace and security and it forges deep and lasting personal and cultural connections between Australia and the people of other nations, especially those in our region. Let there be no doubt that well-targeted and delivered foreign aid makes a life-saving and nation-changing difference. Through the provision of development assistance, six million fewer children died in 2012 than in 1990. Through the provision of development assistance the international community is on track to halve the number of people living in poverty by 2015.

As I have said before, the contrast between Labor and the coalition when it comes to foreign aid is clear: it is clear in the numbers, in the language, in the values and, most importantly, in the outcomes. Under the Howard government aid funding was low and unpredictable, averaging 0.25 per cent of GNI. The provision of aid was less well targeted in terms of addressing the sharpest needs and there was no appetite for reform.

Under the former Labor government, Australia's contribution to international development grew every year, increasing by 80 per cent since 2007, and reaching 0.37 per cent of GNI in 2013-14. It would have continued to grow a further 60 per cent to reach 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2017-18. On the coalition's current path we now face a backwards slide to 0.3 per cent of GNI over the next four years, which includes the cutting of $700 million—or one in every $8 of aid—in this financial year alone. The coalition's shift in emphasis towards a kind of 'aid for trade' approach risks undermining the current targeted focus on education, health, water and sanitation, gender equality, infrastructure and governance.

Of course Labor supports appropriate private sector development and recognises the huge potential to reach development goals in partnership with the private sector—as demonstrated in the business engagement strategy released by the former foreign minister Bob Carr last year. Our Mining for Development Initiative is helping to leverage sustainable development outcomes from resource extraction in many African countries. There are genuine synergies between Australia and many countries of Africa when it comes to mining and agriculture, and it is appropriate that Australian expertise and skills be targeted to areas where we can make a real difference, for instance, in agricultural research, dry-land farming, transboundary water management and mining governance, as well as in areas where the MDGs are lagging, such as in water and sanitation, and maternal and child health.

Assisting the development of a continent of nearly one billion people is not only the right thing to do but clearly in our own economic, strategic, security and national interests. Yet the government has signalled the likely withdrawal of support from a number of regions, potentially including much of Africa, and has not indicated whether it supports Australian membership of the African Development Bank, a measure recommended by the Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness.

The action that this bill in part enables—namely, the cessation of AusAID's independent existence—goes hand-in-hand with the government's massive cut to Australia's foreign aid and gives effect to the government's view that international development is a low priority. I would like to quote from a piece published at the end of October by Robin Davies, currently the Associate Director of the Development Policy Centre and a person who worked for AusAID from 1993 to 2012. He writes:

Now the borders around AusAID are being comprehensively breached and dismantled, probably beyond any possibility of easy reconstruction. While this is in the end just a ‘machinery of government’ change, it is inevitably experienced as an affront, a personal loss, to the people who have invested their working lives, or their hopes for a working life, in the organisation. The affront might have been lessened if there were a perception that this unheralded merger were not in reality a hostile takeover, if DFAT as agent were thought to be acting only in line with the objectives of the government as principal, and if the objectives of the merger had been convincingly stated. But, as it is, there is a sense that one organisation is being consumed by another whose objectives might not exactly coincide with those of the government. The government wants a focused, high-quality aid program that strengthens Australia’s bilateral relationships. It can’t be easy for anybody inside AusAID to see how its disintegration could serve that end.

With the change that this bill facilitates, the government is dissolving an agency and structure whose programs, operations and outcomes were in May this year praised by an independent OECD peer review as efficient, transparent and effective; an agency that was recommended as a model for other countries to follow, especially in the areas of disability-inclusive development, the provision of aid to fragile states, and organisational reform. f course, along with the dissolution of the agency goes $4.5 billion in critical funding for lifesaving programs to help some of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people.

It was a great and humbling privilege to hold the position as Minister for International Development, albeit very briefly, and to be the minister responsible for AusAID. In that role, I saw firsthand the life-changing assistance that AusAID provides. In Timor-Leste, which shares the unfortunate distinction with Burundi of having the worst child malnutrition rates in the world, AusAID and ACIAR, through the Seeds of Life project, have worked with the government of Timor-Leste to provide 33,500 Timorese farmers with higher yielding seed varieties, already enabling them to grow more and better quality food and to sell some of the seeds. While visiting the Solomon Islands for the 10th anniversary of RAMSI, I announced funding for 8,000 sight-restoring operations to be performed in the Pacific over the next three years through organisations like the Pacific Eye Institute and the Fred Hollows Foundation. Last year the Australian aid program vaccinated more than 2.7 million children, enrolled one million additional children in school, constructed or maintained more than 4,400 kilometres of road, provided access to safe water for an additional 2.2 million people and assisted more than 300,000 additional births to be attended by a skilled birth attendant, in addition to providing lifesaving assistance to 11.8 million people in conflict or crisis situations.

Under Labor, Australia entered into long-term partnerships with trusted Australian NGOs and we broke new ground in recognising aid programs are most effective when people with disability are included. Australia's Ambassador for Disability-Inclusive Development—the first in the world—will play a key role in advocating for increased resources and attention to disability-inclusive development. I sincerely hope this ambassadorial position will not also be dismantled. We also recognised gender inequality is a key obstacle to overcoming poverty. We had a 10-year plan to work together with women in the region to catalyse the generational change needed to boost women's equality and rights in the Pacific. Under Labor's aid program, 86 per cent of country-specific aid in 2013-14 was targeted to the Asia-Pacific, because we should rightly be paying most attention to partnerships in our own region—a part of the world with a high concentration of fragile and underdeveloped states.

I want to pay tribute to the work AusAID staff here in Canberra and on post around the world performed as a stand-alone agency for nearly 40 years and to the expertise, energy and commitment of all the many staff members who have contributed to AusAID's critical achievements. When as minister I first addressed the AusAID staff here in Canberra, and on post around the world through the marvels of modern technology, I said:

Development assistance is one of the most important aspects of Australia's national policy. And I believe many Australians understand and value our aid program. Yet I'd also say that the range and the variety of assistance provided; the severity and complexity of the disadvantage alleviated; and the profound difference that is made to the lives of millions of people, in millions of ways is perhaps not fully appreciated. I would like to ensure that it is appreciated to a greater degree.

Australians naturally want to know that their taxpayers' dollars being spent through the aid program are making a real difference on the ground; a lasting difference; a transformative difference; and that those resources are not being wasted.

That is an entirely reasonable expectation and AusAID is delivering on that expectation, as found by the OECD peer review in May this year …

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All of us in this room and this Agency know from experience the incredible difference that development assistance can make—that it saves lives; changes nations; and builds cooperation between societies, and that, dollar-for-dollar, well-targeted foreign aid contributes to stability and security at least as well as any government initiative, and I intend to make it part of my role to communicate that as much as possible to the Australian community.

I would also like to ensure that Australians understand that the need for development assistance is particularly acute in our part of the world. Of Australia's 24 closest neighbours, 22 of them are developing countries. Our interests and our prospects are deeply interwoven with the prospects of all the countries and all the people with whom we share this part of the planet and we have a responsibility to advocate for the development needs in our region, not only in relation to health, education and governance, but also in relation to infrastructure, gender-equality, disability-inclusion, human rights and climate change.

This imperative is made keener by the multilateral leadership opportunities before us in the next few years.

Australia has just assumed the presidency of the G20 and we have already taken our place on the Security Council. These are positions of great significance and influence and they bring with them great responsibility. We owe it to ourselves and to our region to take these opportunities and to make a difference.

We are moving into a critical period in terms of the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and to the formation of a strong post-MDG approach that will need to resolve and harmonise the twin streams of poverty reduction and sustainable development. Australia has always been a leader and contributor when it comes to the most pressing and difficult global and multilateral challenges and it is widely recognised that as a nation we go above and beyond in making those contributions and showing that leadership. Unfortunately this government's approach, inside its first hundred days, is to retreat into self-interest and passivity; to undermine the world-leading achievements of Australia's foreign aid work in the service of our national character, ethos, and interest; and to pinch pennies from the poor. I am really sorry that that is the case.

I know that the spirit of AusAID lives on, not least in the many good people who will continue to give their all in providing Australian aid. I am confident that the vast majority of Australians share Labor's position that helping our fellow men and women escape from suffering and deprivation is a stand-alone imperative, deserving of a stand-alone agency armed in its good work with a contribution of 0.5 per cent of our strong and stable GNI, increasing ultimately to the 0.7 per cent target that Australia under the Howard government signed up to in the 2000 UN Millennium Declaration. This effort is core to our national ethos. The creation of safety, peace, wellbeing and self-sufficiency, especially in our region, is central to the Australian project.

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