Laurie Ferguson (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

As the representative of Werriwa, which had approximately 10,000 electors at the 2011 census identifying as Pacific Islanders, and having visited Fiji, Samoa and Tonga over the last two years, I at the outset express my solidarity with the Fijian people over the events surrounding Cyclone Winston. Currently, 29 people are dead and UNICEF estimates that 60,000 people, including 26,000 children, are living in the areas that experienced the worst effects. Also, there are a massive 400,000 people living in badly affected areas.

Obviously, I commend the Australian government's commitment of $5 million, and the reality of Australians on the spot assisting through a variety of NGOs. We need to keep monitoring that to understand the depth of the issues and be prepared to give further support.

I also join with the Chair's in commenting on the efforts of the secretariat, led by Jerome Brown, but more particularly Sonya Fladun and the research officers. The reality is that these reports often depend on the secretariat. The level of commitment, interest, knowledge and availability of members varies considerably and I have no doubt that with this particular report they put in a magnificent effort.

The background of this inquiry is the 18 June 2014 new aid directions statement, giving an emphasis to the empowerment of females in six priority areas. It was stated at the time that one of our performance benchmarks is that all of our aid investments must assist gender issues, with at least 80 per cent focused on supporting empowerment for women. Since then, the department itself, and the Ambassador for Women and Girls, former senator Natasha Stott Despoja, have certainly focused on that area. Whilst we might quibble and argue about the amount of money in the foreign aid program, we certainly do not argue about that priority. It is in line with comments by the United Nations University on 1 January 2013:

A key challenge for donors is to ensure that gender is, and remains, a development priority in an era of "priority overload" in development policy and globalization. Gender is often a cross-cutting theme in development programmes, to be mainstreamed among a range of others …. This can result in gender being "mainstreamed out".

The danger is that gender equality will be subsumed into wider discussions about inequality reduction in order to reduce priority overload, so negating the importance of gender issues …

Australia clearly recognises that.

The basic theme of this inquiry outcome was the reality that we have to be in this for the long haul. We have to understand that there might not be immediate short-term gains from investment of foreign aid. We have to assess very clearly the local impacts and understand cultural values. The need—and I think the Chair particularly stressed this as one of his constant maxims—for data collection, looking at outcomes and making sure that we know of the evidence that is necessary. Fundamentally, we have to understand the diversity of the region. Clearly, we have large populations in Indonesia and in the region, including in small island states such as Tuvalu. We should not be too judgemental about the way in which these societies operate. However, on a broader front, nearly 70 per cent of Pacific women reported sexual and physical abuse. Estimates are that 40 to 70 per cent have been assailed by family members.

The inquiry attracted significant public interest. Six national states made submissions through their embassies and a very broad coalition of NGOs made their points known: Oaktree, ACFID, Oxfam, CARE Australia, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance, Slavery Links Australia, the International Labour Organization (Pacific Office) et cetera. Of course, they would, given the seriousness of these problems. ActionAid Australia said:

… addressing [violence against women and girls] in humanitarian settings is crucial to ending the cycle of vulnerability, marginalisation, exclusion and poverty …

Papua New Guinea has a maternal mortality rate of 733 per 100,000, and it is also extremely high in the Solomons, Vanuatu, Kiribati and the Federated States of Micronesia. Only 55 per cent of women in Papua New Guinea have 'skilled birth attendance' at their births. Cambodia has a death rate of 206 per 100,000. Timor-Leste has similar figures.

The situation on a broader front, as Oxfam said, is that despite their very broad support for the Millennium Development Goals, this report is necessary because our region is particularly not going forward with the progress that the other parts of the world have. Oxfam said that the Pacific is falling behind in the global fight against poverty. It noted that almost one third of the Pacific's 2.7 million people live in poverty and made the comment that poverty is not just about having enough to eat; it is also about basic rights and opportunities for all and the prevention of unnecessary deaths.

With regard to the state of our region, we note that in PNG in 2009, whilst 53 per cent of males and 59 per cent of females were dependent on subsistence, the men actually earned twice as much. The recommendations are extremely broad. Perhaps the most important is that we lift the proportion of foreign aid specifically going to this sector from five per cent to eight per cent to 10 per cent over a five-year period. That, of course, is in line with the government's emphasis on this part of the aid budget. The outcome of the report is that we feel that, even though the government has focused on it and even though our DFAT people are in the job of making sure there is an emphasis, we need to put more money in. I have to say that, whilst we did not want to single out particular countries, during the course of the inquiries there were projects and issues that emerged in a single nation. One of them was to explore ways to extend programs addressing violence, such as those being run by the Fiji Women's Crisis Centre, which the next speaker and I were privileged to attend, and linking those programs to similar initiatives operating in Australia.

The report calls on us to encourage governments in the region which have not already done so to prioritise the approval of national plans for UN Security Council resolution 1325. Further, the committee recommends that the Australian government prioritise work with governments in the Indo-Pacific region, non-governmental organisations and the scientific research community for the development of effective low-cost assessable medicines to treat AIDS. The committee also recommends that the Australian aid program retains a focus on ensuring that clean water and access to satisfactory sanitation and hygiene is available, especially in schools. On that front, of course, we should focus on ensuring that all education programs are designed to keep girls in school and addressing the issue of sanitation facilities by providing facilities that can be adequately maintained and serviced locally.

On the question of political participation, the current status is pretty lamentable. Some of the countries—Papua New Guinea in particular—have taken a backward step over recent years. We can say that Samoa, perhaps, is commendable by regional standards, but in fact the overall status of women in leadership roles, being role models and being able to affect policy is dire in our region. The committee recommended that the Australian government prioritise girls' and women's leadership and political participation, and integrate these as a priority across the region. In line with that, there is the need to fund women's advocacy organisations throughout the region. It is clear that they often do not have a voice in society that has any effect upon government. It was the unanimous recommendation of the committee that we do fund those organisations. In the same vein, the Australian government needs to increase research and programs supporting leadership and female empowerment in agriculture and key employment sectors for women.

In conclusion, it was very reassuring that there was such a high number of submissions from a broad spectrum—governmental and non-government, both here and overseas. Clearly, the whole focus in our region is one in which we, whilst being a major aid donor and a major form of assistance, have to be mindful of our image of being too paternalistic and too judgemental. We have to make sure that we fully maximise the possibility of getting local on-the-site advice from women's organisations, liaising with them in situations where they are not otherwise represented and making sure that our staff have close continuing contact with those organisations.

See this speech in context