Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll keep my comments fairly brief. I support the Official Development Assistance Multilateral Replenishment Obligations (Special Appropriation) Bill 2019. It gives life to Australia's commitments to critical multilateral initiatives: the World Bank International Development Association, the World Bank's debt relief schemes, the Asian Development Bank's Asian Development Fund, the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund and the Multilateral Fund for Implementing the Montreal Protocol. It is important work. The expenditure is in the order of $350 million a year. There's no cash impact to the budget; this is to give effect to already budgeted commitments. In that sense, it's a technical bill, because a special appropriation bill is needed for the reasons that have been outlined and I won't go over. These are all existing commitments.

The thing I do just want to put on the record yet again is that this bill comes in the context of a massive $11.8 billion cut to Australia's international development assistance under the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government, the ATM government. This is about leadership; this is not about being popular, let's be honest. In the community, you hear a lot about how charity begins at home. People think we as a nation spend far more than we actually do on international aid. If you ask people how much we spend—they've done surveys on this—the figures are quite astounding. Some people think we spend literally 10 per cent of our national budget on foreign aid, but that's just not true.

It takes leadership to rebut this 'charity begins at home' notion. Firstly, we need to remind people that this is in accordance with Australian values. This is who we are as a people. This is who we have been for decades. We don't forget our neighbours in Papua New Guinea and East Timor, the people who gave us shelter and helped save us during the Second World War, some of whom gave up their lives; in the Solomon Islands; and right throughout the Pacific. We don't forget them. These are our values. We understand that we're one of the world's wealthiest countries, notwithstanding all the issues that we have here. We give thanks for that and we try and share that and do a bit in the neighbourhood. We're good international citizens. You've got to remind people of this. We are good international citizens and we should be proud of that. There are challenges we share with countries in the region. There are a whole bunch of things in the region that we can't do alone and no country can do alone, but we have the resources and the capabilities and the relationships to do our part, and we should be doing our part.

But if that argument doesn't work, if values and international citizenship aren't enough, then there's the argument that works more effectively, I have to say, with many members of the government, and that's fine. It's national interest. International development aid is in our national interest. We can do more and we must do more to ensure that we live in a peaceful and stable region and that the countries nearby don't sink into instability and chaos. We know that global poverty, extreme poverty and extreme inequality provide a breeding ground for terrorism. That's a known fact. We know that, when we have problems like drug-resistant tuberculosis coming in and out of Queensland, it is in our interests—our very narrow, most selfish interests—to do more about this in the countries to our north. And poverty, of course, is a cause of these things. Ultimately, we don't want failed states on our doorstep. If you want to take that really hardline argument, we don't want failed states on our doorstep—and foreign aid is cheaper than sending in the military.

But it's shocking that, under this government, international development assistance is on track to fall to just 0.19 per cent of gross national income. We're on track to give the lowest level ever recorded, from data since 1961, under any Australian government—0.19 per cent of GNI. That's 19c in every $100 of our national wealth. It's the meanest and nastiest level that we've ever achieved. That's what this Prime Minister and this government are driving us towards. At the very time we most need to be engaged in our region, we are cutting international development assistance.

If you look at the global Human Development Index, we should be ashamed that Africa in many ways is getting better in many places, in aggregate. That means that the Pacific—in our backyard, in our sphere of responsibility as a wealthy, large country in the region—will soon be the least developed place in the world and will have the poorest people in the world, with the worst life outcomes.

We're seeing with climate change an increasing need for aid and humanitarian assistance with rising natural disasters. We need to not just lift our game on mitigation—that's a debate for another day—but invest more in resilience and adaption. Of course there is also the deteriorating security environment, a challenging environment. Someone from the Howard government thought it was a good idea to cut Radio Australia, didn't they? That has turned out well. Now we've cut our foreign aid. The withdrawal of Australia from the region, the retreat, has left space for others who don't share our values.

Only last week the shadow minister finally got some real figures. There was a 10 per cent cut to aid for East Timor. East Timor, a country of around a million people right on our doorstep, with whom we've shared so much, has a 10 per cent cut to aid despite all the troubles there. There was a 50 per cent cut to aid to Indonesia. We had the Indonesian President here in the last sitting week, and the government was proclaiming our wonderful special relationship. Well, they're cutting aid and development assistance by 50 per cent. There is a 86 per cent cut to health funding in Indonesia.

They've got a review underway. I was trying to think of the best analogy. Are they rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic or putting lipstick on a pig? I don't think I'm allowed say 'polishing a turd', am I? That's probably against—

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