Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I delivered my maiden speech in this place in February 2010 I spoke about the importance of foreign aid as one of our moral responsibilities as a nation. I would be the first to say, though, that in and of itself foreign aid is not the only solution to lifting people out of poverty. We all know that the quickest and most effective way to do that is to create strong economies and to open up new markets to trade.

However, today I wanted to remark on the foreign aid question. I know it is an issue that many of my constituents feel very strongly about. There are three things that I want to raise today. The first is to make sure that the aid Australia delivers is effective and efficient; the second is to ensure that when we as a nation make a commitment we do what it is that we say we will do; and the third is to highlight the recent Gillard government's announcement to strip further funding from foreign aid and to appropriate that particular funding to use for their border protection failures.

In terms of aid effectiveness, before the last election we made a commitment that in government we would ensure that we would respond to the Australian National Audit Office concerns regarding Australia's aid effectiveness. We were pleased, of course, that the government instituted a review in response to our statements, and conducted that review. Since that review has been announced and the recommendations have been tabled we would say that the government has not fully implement the recommendations to ensure that aid is used effectively, and that there needs to be real strict performance benchmarks put in place. That is something we will do.

As you know, we also made a commitment as a nation to increase the aid budget to 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015-16 when we were standing for our seat on the United Nations Security Council. This of course was pushed back to 2016-17 in last year's budget, and in this year's budget it was pushed back again to 2017-18.

The final point that I wish to make in the time remaining concerns the decision in the current budget to defer the target date to increase aid. This follows the stripping out of around $375 million from the aid program to help cover our blowout from the government's border protection costs, a $10 billion blow-out, as a result of their dismantling of the previous border protection program. We are in the invidious position now where Australia, our nation, is the third-largest recipient of Australian aid. I think most people would be quite concerned to hear that our foreign aid is being used in this way.