Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to support this motion. I congratulate and thank the member for Hindmarsh for moving it. Earlier this year, Oxfam revealed in a report that eight men, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world's population. The report entitled An economy for the 99 percentfound that the income of the poorest 10 per cent of people raised less than $3 a year between 1988 and 2011. Global inequality continues to be an intractable problem and one that is testing the mettle with world leaders tasked with turning around the dire circumstances of many.

To do our bit, when Labor was in government, Australia's overseas foreign aid budget increased from 28c in every $100 to 37c in every $100 by 2013-14. Today, unfortunately, thanks to the cuts, in particular, of the Abbott government but continued by the Turnbull government, Australia spends just 23c per $100 on overseas aid. Our overseas aid budget, at the moment, is the lowest it has ever been in our nation's history after the foreign minister allowed not one, not two but three cuts to the foreign aid budget—three cuts to her portfolio—valued in total at $11 billion.

This government removed—can you believe this?—as one of the goals of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and our overseas aid budget, 'alleviating poverty'. They removed that as a goal for our aid budget and replaced it with something to do with international business. We have seen cuts to eye health programs in Vietnam and cuts to sexually transmitted disease health programs in Africa. There is little doubt that this quite 'madness of endless aid cuts', as described by World Vision CEO Tim Costello, has damaged our reputation as a responsible global citizen while cutting public health, education, infrastructure and biosecurity projects.

Australia has a particular responsibility to assist its neighbours, particularly in the Pacific region, to bring them out of poverty, to provide infrastructure to grow their economies and, importantly, to help them tackle the devastating effects of climate change. I have often said that the small populations of the Pacific Islands contribute next to zero to climate change but they feel the effects greater than any other nation in the world. Australia as the largest economy and largest emitter per head of population in our region has a responsibility to assist those nations make a transition and reduce the effects of global warming and climate change on their economies.

In government, Labor established the Australian community based climate change action grants to provide practical on-the-ground support for climate change resilience, and the former government invested $34 million in this program. We know that the Abbott-Turnbull government has done its best to destroy the renewable energy industry in Australia, through its attacks on the renewable energy target. Labor accepts, overwhelmingly, the science of climate change and that human activity is causing increased temperatures and making it much worse for Pacific nations.

There was $11.3 billion cut from the aid budget for development assistance. We all know that we are dealing with tight fiscal circumstances but it is important to remember that in addition to alleviating poverty and global inequality Australian aid is aimed at ensuring the development of economies and achieving a world that is more secure. These goals remain as important as ever.

In my previous role as parliamentary secretary for the Pacific Islands I saw the difference that Australian foreign aid can make on the ground. I visited the bridges and roads that were funded by the previous AusAID, that have connected communities and provided communities—for the first time—the ability to interconnect, to trade with each other and to grow their incomes. I visited hospitals like the tuberculosis clinic that I opened in Daru, in the west of Papua New Guinea, and saw the difference it has made to the lives of people who suffer tuberculosis, a growing affliction in the Pacific, particularly in Papua New Guinea.

Australian aid makes a difference and this government should feel shame for cutting the aid budget by $11 billion.

Debate adjourned.

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