Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for the Environment) Share this | Hansard source

I know I shouldn't be too optimistic. I should be cautious and we should watch carefully. But you start by dissolving Australia's stand-alone aid agency and you follow that by making Australian aid the victim of the largest budget cuts as a category of government expense. You take Australian aid to the lowest level it has been in our history. You talk about how you're going to focus aid in our region, but actually aid to South Asia declines by 42 per cent. You talk about how you are going to be more Jakarta than Geneva but you cut 50 per cent of all aid to Indonesia, which means 86 per cent of programs that deliver health assistance in Indonesia and 57 per cent of programs that deliver education in Indonesia. You come in and fashion your aid related four-word slogan, 'more Jakarta less Geneva', and then you go and make a 50 per cent cut in aid funding to our nearest and one of our most significant neighbours in the region.

We welcomed the President of Indonesia here last week to talk about how trade agreements are important. We talked about how the strategic position of comfort that Australia has enjoyed in our region for a period of time is changing, that it's much more challenging and that it's a geopolitical contest in which need to be involved. Yet one of the means by which we are involved in our region in that process, our Australian aid program, has been ripped into a hundred pieces and thrown on the floor. Anything has got to be better than what we've got, I say cautiously. You could only hope that this process of looking at our aid program going forward will do a number of things. It will certainly ensure that there are more resources, that the cuts stop, that the retreat from supporting our regional neighbours stops and that we look at what we've done in relation to Pakistan and reconsider it. Any and all of those things should occur.

I note the comments of the CEO of the Australian Council for International Development, the peak body for Australian NGOs in the international development space, Marc Purcell. In relation to this aid review he has said:

"For 70 years, Australia has assisted countries to create a more stable, peaceful and prosperous world through international aid and development. But we must always be vigilant about how the international environment is changing and tailor our foreign policy accordingly.

"A new development cooperation policy provides an opportunity to consider that environment and shape our response accordingly so it can best tackle poverty, injustice and inequality.

"The case for relevant Australian development assistance is compelling: Pacific Island nations are facing an existential crisis created by climate change; in Bangladesh, more than one million Rohingya people have fled persecution from Myanmar; and in South-East Asia over 300 million people live in extreme poverty, and inequality is rising.

"Australia's response should be to rise to these challenges and for the best of Australian expertise and experience to be harnessed to work with our neighbours.

Hear, hear! I entirely endorse that. I can only hope that the government and the responsible minister are listening to what the sector has been saying for a long time.

Let me finish by paying tribute to all those who work in the aid sector both within Australian aid and in the non-government organisations that are our delivery partners. I was fortunate to be with a number of colleagues as part of a regional leadership initiative that visited Bangladesh in January. We saw the work that's being done to combat one of the greatest humanitarian crises afoot in the world, where you have nearly 1 million Rohingya people from Myanmar who have been forcibly pushed off their land and subjected to terrible violence. They are being looked after in Bangladesh with the support of international NGOs, including NGOs that rely on Australian government support.

There are also programs in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, because Bangladesh itself is a country that has very significant development challenges. It has some 10 million people who are classed as ultrapoor, which means they survive on considerably less than US$1.50 a day and generally struggle to have more than two meals.

So to all people involved in aid: we know you take on work that can be physically and emotionally draining. What you do is vital. What you do is some of the most compassionate and life-changing work that human beings can undertake. It matters so much. Thank you. Keep going.

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