Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In psychology, behaviour is defined as irrational if an action continues to be repeated despite its repeated failure to achieve the desired outcome. On this definition, our aid policy towards many recipient countries has been irrational for many years. Despite many millions of dollars in Australian aid and Millennium Development Goals, key development indicators such as literacy rates, infant mortality, life expectancy and real income per capita were either stagnating or, in many cases, deteriorating. While this has started to turn around in recent years, we have known for decades about our delivery shortcomings.

In the light of inherent failures, many advocated for a more interventionist aid policy. While this view may have had popular appeal in the media, it would have had serious adverse implications for our relationship with, for example, Pacific island countries and even Indonesia. Worse, it would have given succour to the view of our Asian critics, who have claimed that Australia continues to harbour colonial aspirations. We have to accept that to be successful the aid policy must not just help reduce mass poverty, but that it also has to do as a guest in the aid recipient country. To do otherwise is not aid but imperialism, whether intentional or not.

The Marasin Meri aid concept focused on building a low-cost community distribution system for health services in Papua New Guinea. Coverage of health services across Papua New Guinea has actually been declining over the past decade. The challenges of distance, language, isolation, declining numbers of formal and informal health workers and poor transportation contribute to this. The distribution of key public health commodities to communities is sporadic through the government system due to a broken supply chain, lack of transparency in commodity procurement and inadequate health infrastructure. Infectious diseases, including malaria, HIV and diseases from poor water and sanitation, dominate the cause structure of mortality.

Marasin Meri aims to develop a financially self-sustainable, secure and reliable solution to delivering essential health solutions to poor communities in Papua New Guinea, incorporating the key elements of social franchising, health products, village women as community health promoters and microfinance. Targeted products will include bed nets, purification tablets, contraceptives, condoms, dewormers, ORS, paracetamol, vitamins, safe birth kits and personal care products. The products would be regularly delivered at agreed wholesale prices at common meeting places. Product selection would focus on prevention, treatment and personal hygiene.

Much of the concept behind the Marasin Meri plan has been introduced in varying degrees of strength across Papua New Guinea, through private enterprise, religious organisations or volunteer aid organisations, such as Zonta International. Many private corporations with business ventures in PNG have, as part of their contract to operate in Papua New Guinea, introduced privately-funded aid programs, which have had serious positive impacts on the country and its people.

The enhanced community health project incorporates community education, awareness and training to address health and wellness initiatives and encourage disease prevention, reproductive health behaviours and awareness on non-communicable disease issues. The program includes scholarships to in-service health care workers and pre-service students from project areas to pursue health subjects at the Divine Word University in Madang. The PNG LNG Project boasted at the end of August 2013 that almost 7,700 Papua New Guinea citizens were employed on project activities. These are just some of the successes that results-based aid programs can achieve.

The foreign minister announced the Australian government's new aid paradigm last week, which identifies that traditional approaches to aid are no longer good enough and that aid alone is no solution for poverty. New strict performance benchmarks will ensure that aid spending is accountable to taxpayers and will actually achieve results. The foreign minister established a new Development Innovation Hub in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to engage creative thinkers from inside and outside the public sector from Australia and overseas to look at new ways to deliver aid.

The new aid paradigm will see Australia continue to be one of the world's most generous aid donors, with a responsible, affordable and sustainable aid budget of more than $5 billion a year. This announcement represents a significant and positive policy shift that reflects our commitment to economic growth, poverty reduction and increased standards of living in developing nations in our region.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the foreign minister for her efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of our foreign aid program, realising that the success of aid should not be determined by dollars spent but rather by actual results on the ground.