Bruce Baird (Cook, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The G20 conference held in Melbourne last week saw the world’s economic leaders come together to discuss the challenges facing economies and societies globally. Additionally, the presence of U2 frontman and activist, Bono, here in Australia has put the issues facing developing countries on the agenda. Disease and poverty are just two of many problems confronting the Third World today. As a wealthy country, Australia has a responsibility to play a leading role in helping to address this suffering.

The Millennium Summit in September 2000 was the largest gathering of world leaders in history. At the summit these countries, including Australia, committed to a global strategy for reducing extreme poverty with a prescribed deadline of 2015. These are known as the Millennium Development Goals. They are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; to achieve universal primary education; to promote gender equality and to empower women; to reduce child mortality; to improve maternal health; to combat HIV-AIDS, malaria and other diseases; to ensure environmental sustainability; and to develop a global partnership for development.

Each day about 30,000 children around the world die mainly of preventable causes. This is around 11 million children a year; 4.8 million of them live in Africa and 4.7 million in the Asia-Pacific region. The main causes of child deaths are neonatal causes, 36.9 per cent; respiratory infections, 19.1 per cent; diarrhoea, 16.6 per cent; malaria, eight per cent; measles, 3.7 per cent; and AIDS, three per cent. These numbers are horrific, yet they are half what they were in 1960 thanks to economic growth, advances in technology and more generous aid. Foreign aid has proven to be effective in eradicating smallpox, largely eradicating polio, and reducing the effects of many other diseases such as river blindness, measles, tuberculosis and malaria. Aid has also provided education for millions of children and young people, reduced the effects of famine and natural disasters, helped to build peace and democracy and assisted many countries to achieve higher levels of economic development.

Abject poverty takes many forms: hunger, disease, lack of income and lack of adequate shelter. The Millennium Development Goals also seek to promote gender equality, education and environmental sustainability. They advocate the basic human rights of all people to health, education, shelter and security. The global effort towards this end has made significant progress. Between 1990 and 2002, average overall incomes increased by 21 per cent. There are also 130 million fewer people in poverty now than there were in 1990. Life expectancy has risen from 63 to 65 years and the child mortality rate has fallen to 88 deaths per 1,000 live births from a 1990 high of 103 deaths per 1,000 live births. What is more, an additional eight per cent of people in the developing world can now access water and an additional 15 per cent now have access to more acceptable standards of sanitation.

However, we have not made progress everywhere and there are significant disparities between countries in terms of their progress or their contribution. Sub-Saharan Africa is where the crisis is at its worst and where we are furthest from meeting millennium targets. Poverty is extreme, there is continuing food insecurity, many people live in slums, and child and maternal mortality rates are devastatingly high. In Asia there has been the fastest progress with the goals, but still hundreds of millions of people remain in abject poverty there. In Latin America there has been mixed progress and in the Middle East and North Africa little or no progress has been made on many of the goals.

The most widely publicised aspect of the Millennium Development Goals is the commitment from the world’s wealthiest countries to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national product, GNP, on official development assistance. It says:

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected.

The 0.7 per cent goal, which was to be spent on official development assistance, or ODA, was first agreed upon in 1970 by Australia and other developed countries. Resolution 2626 on International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in October 1970, stated:

Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 per cent of its gross national product ... by the middle of the Decade.

Yet 36 years later, and only six years after the Millennium Declaration, Australia is spending only 0.3 per cent of GNP on foreign aid. In fact, only five of the 22 OECD donor countries have reached the 0.7 per cent mark in terms of aid: Norway, Sweden, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Denmark. Sixteen of the 22 countries have now committed to reach 0.7 per cent by the year 2015.

Australia has increased its level of aid in recent years. Our ODA spending is currently at $2.9 billion for 2006-07, which is 0.3 per cent of gross national income, GNI. This is up from the 2000 to 2004 period when our spending was just 0.25 per cent of GNI. In comparison, the average contribution of OECD donor countries is 0.5 per cent for 2006. Increased economic growth and fairer trade are both critical to reducing poverty. Almost all recent development agreements have highlighted the need for free and fairer trade, increased aid and sustainable debt.

It is noteworthy that Australia has met its international obligations in relation to debt relief. Australia is a committed participant of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative; we are proud of that. We have gone beyond our formal obligations under the initiative and entirely forgiven the bilateral debts of Ethiopia and Nicaragua. Australia is also one of only a handful of countries to have made an up-front payment of $136 million to cover the World Bank’s share of the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative. This was announced in this year’s budget. However, only 10 per cent of debt in low-income countries has been relieved and much more needs to be done in this area.

Australia is also a leader in free and fairer trade. The World Bank estimates that by 2015, $86 billion in welfare gains would go to developing countries if full trade liberalisation were to be achieved. We have very low levels of agricultural trade protection. Australia is the leader of the Cairns Group of nations. I was recently in New York as a member of the Australian Mission’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly. It was there that I addressed the Second Committee of the UNGA on this very issue of reducing tariff protection on agriculture throughout the world. Our role in this regard has helped the economic growth of many developing economies. We continue to help the poorest countries to build a greater economic capacity to meet people’s basic needs. There is no doubt that economic growth will drive poverty reduction in the medium to long term, yet aid can help provide more opportunities for faster and immediate economic growth through improved health and education; infrastructure, such as roads and ports; and through improved governance, both of the economy and more broadly.

It is true that corruption is a major obstacle in ensuring aid is spent as it is intended. It is also true that aid is only part of the solution, albeit a very important part. Developing countries do need to improve the rule of law and reduce corruption to ensure that aid is absorbed effectively. Governments in receipt of our aid do need to demonstrate a commitment to sound political processes, institutional reform and tackling corruption. However, it is simply a myth that corruption largely stops aid from reaching its intended recipients. It is unreasonable, however, to suggest that we—or any other country, for that matter—will ever be able to guarantee that 100 per cent of aid is spent on provision of basic services. Aid is the cornerstone of international development because it is unmistakable that people need help right now—not later or in the future when their economies can afford it. Health and education projects throughout the developing world are saving lives and reducing suffering as we speak. These projects are proven and they are cost effective. They are saving children’s lives, helping stop the spread of HIV-AIDS, assisting women and girls to achieve their basic rights and protecting the environment.

The recent aid white paper is a step in the right direction in terms of our commitment to a greater foreign aid contribution. However, we need to go further. Australia needs to commit to reaching 0.7 per cent by 2015 and make immediate, tangible steps towards achieving this goal. Within our aid spending we should achieve a better balance between spending on improving governance and spending on basic services like health and education. In our own region particularly, we and other OECD donor countries are not doing enough to support basic services. In 2003-04, total aid from all OECD donor countries averaged just 40c per person for education, $1.33 per person for basic and reproductive health and $1.07 per person for water and sanitation. This is not enough to alleviate extreme poverty in our own backyard when just 19 per cent of Australian aid in our region is being spent on basic services. (Time expired)