Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month I travelled to Papua New Guinea as part of a delegation to inspect Australian development programs with Save the Children. I was joined on this delegation by the member for Batman, the member for Herbert, the member for Mallee and Senator Dastyari from the other place. They are politicians from all political persuasions but also people who share a concern for the wellbeing of people in other nations in our region. In the Eastern Highlands province at Goroka we visited a centre for survivors of sexual assault, rape and family violence, which is supported by Australian development assistance.

Naomi Yupe, who is one of the founders and directors of the support centre, was awarded an Australian Leadership Award and studied and lived in my electorate of Gellibrand, in Melbourne's west, at Victoria University in 2012 and 2013. The centre she works at opened three months ago thanks to Australian development assistance funding and, as of when we were attending, has already seen 35 victims pass through the project. One of the most confronting parts of the trip to PNG was sitting and listening to Naomi telling us about how a teenage girl came to be at the clinic. She had been gang-raped in a coffee plantation by a group of drunk men in the area. Even worse, due the inadequacies of the judicial system in the area, she was forced to continue to live side-by-side with the perpetrators in her community. The family violence support centre, supported by Australian development assistance funding, was her only place of refuge and support. This centre is the only one of its kind for more than half a million people who live in the surrounding areas and without Australian development assistance funding this service would not exist.

Australia funds multiple projects that tackle domestic and family violence throughout PNG. We also fund immunisation programs to help protect young children against polio and health projects to fight new strands of drug resistant tuberculosis—a growing challenge for Papua New Guinea. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have capitalised on PNG's love of national rugby league football to get young children into early childhood education and to learn literacy and life skills.

The visit on the trip to the Buk bilong Pikinini site was a particularly special one for me, seeing kids not only being thrilled to run around with former rugby league stars in the PNG Highlands but also being taught the basics of English and in the literacy programs. To this end, we also fund education programs for young girls and we visited a particularly moving school that had won innovation project funding. We also support the institution of public administration and initiatives that help to create the next generation of Papua New Guinean leaders. The Australian Federal Police train local police and build capacity to reduce corruption and implement processes to enforce the rule of law.

Despite this, on their current trajectory, PNG are unlikely to meet their Millennium Development Goals. Thirty-eight per cent of the population lives below the poverty line and it is estimated that approximately 40 per cent of children in the country are stunted. To make things worse, the country is currently experiencing a devastating drought brought on by the intensification of El Nino and other unusual weather conditions. Problems stemming from the lack of water are amplified in some regions by overnight frosts that are destroying what is left of subsistence farm crops and food gardens. With almost 85 per cent of the population living in rural areas and many relying on subsistence farming for their survival, this is having crippling effects. According to the PNG's National Weather Service, these conditions are likely to last through to 2016. In this context, Australian aid is critical to the wellbeing and development of Papua New Guinean Society—it makes a real difference.

Unfortunately, many countries in our region have not been as shielded from the government's cuts to aid funding as Papua New Guinea. Despite the commitments made prior to the election and soon after the election of the coalition government, cuts to the aid budget was announced in the first Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook to the tune of $3.7 billion over the forward estimates. The cuts have continued since, according to the Lowy Institute; with the exception of Cambodia, Timor-Leste and Nepal, aid to countries in Asia has been cut by over 40 per cent since this time. Cuts to the aid programs from outside our immediate region have been cut deeper still, with aid to the Middle East by 43 per cent and sub-Saharan Africa by 70 per cent. In total more than $11 billion has been cut from Australian aid projects since the election of the coalition government. In fact, this government has cut aid to its lowest level in generations; it is now at its lowest level since records began in the 1960s. Our spending on aid has dropped to 0.22 per cent of gross national income, which means that Australia now only spends 22 cents of every $100 on aid.

Respondents to 2011 Lowy Institute poll thought that 16 per cent of the entire federal budget was spent on foreign aid, when in fact it was less than 1/12 of that figure. A recent report by the Australia Institute charts the increases and decreases in foreign aid funding since a specific department for it was introduced by the Whitlam government in 1974. It has found that the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party will preside over the largest cuts to foreign aid of any foreign affairs minister in Australian history. The Executive Director of the Australian Council for International Development, Marc Purcell, has lamented the government's aid cuts, saying that it undermined Australia's reputation amongst the international community. Other high-profile individuals in the international aid sector have been similarly critical of the government's cuts. World Vision's CEO Tim Costello has said that the cuts will put lives at risk, saying:

It seems incredible that we should be willing to undermine the stability and security of our own region.

Oxfam's Chief Executive Helen Szoke said that the cuts could jeopardise disaster relief preparedness and that

Aid not only saves lives and helps people rise out of poverty, it is an essential investment in the security and stability of our region and our economy.

In December 2014 Save the Children's CEO Paul Ronalds warned of the 'serious consequences for some of the most vulnerable communities in the world', and that was before the most recent round of aid cuts.

What seems to be getting lost in the current debate is that Australian aid works. In PNG in 2013-14 alone we established 14 family and sexual violence units, trained 4315 teachers and financed 600,000 children to attend primary school. In the past we have maintained over 2000 kilometres of PNG's most economically important roads, strengthened health and HIV/AIDS services—preventing an epidemic of that disease—and enabled 24,848 babies to be delivered under the supervision of skilled staff and immunised 54,393 children against measles and other diseases.

Australia continues to play a role in promoting vaccination and immunisation, not just in our region but throughout the world through public-private partnerships, such as the Gavi Alliance. Five hundred million children have been vaccinated worldwide with their support and it could not have been so successful without Australia's input—as Gavi's largest donor. It is depressing to see that the coalition has sought to gut funding for international aid while the rest of the world continues to view it as a priority.

On 25 September the United Nations adopted a new framework for aid, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, along with 17 ambitious goals, the Sustainable Development Goals. This new platform will succeed the Millennium Development Goals, which expires this year. The third goal, relating to health and wellbeing, includes ending the epidemics of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis by 2030—an ambitious target that will require extensive programs in our region. The Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been working within our region and throughout the world to eradicate these diseases. So far, the Global Fund's programs have resulted in 17 million lives being saved, a decline of a third of people dying from these diseases. Australia has in the past been a generous donor to the Global Fund—given the disproportionate focus of the Global Fund's efforts in our own region, this has been a very good investment for Australia, indeed.

The Global Fund replenishment meeting is scheduled for mid-December this year, and I implore the government not to continue to look to the aid budget only for savings, but to look at it as a platform we can use to make the world a better place. This year the Minister for Foreign Affairs declared her intention for Australia to bid for a place as a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2029-30. However, the aid cuts under her watch and the unusual extended lead time for the bid have left onlookers perplexed. The shadow foreign affairs minister and Deputy Leader of the Labor Party, Tanya Plibersek, said, although Labor supports the government playing a bigger role in the international arena, that:

We welcome the announcement by the Government, despite the fact that it's a very long way off. When we are actually going backwards on climate change, we have had the largest aid cuts in the history of Australia... and we've also had concerns about our treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, the effort to secure a spot on the UN Human Rights Council will be very difficult for Australia.

If the Government wanted to increase its diplomatic activity and aid budget, it could work with Labor today at bringing our aid spend back to a respectable level. Australian aid projects have benefited millions of people in our region and throughout the world, alleviating poverty and creating prosperity. As well as being good for its own sake in a moral sense, a prosperous and stable region is in our own national interest, particularly our own strategic interests to our north. In the United Kingdom, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has realised this and has committed to spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid. When he was asked about the policy, he said:

We accept the moral case for keeping our promises to the world's poorest, even when we face challenges at home. It says something about this country. It says something about our standing in the world and our sense of duty in helping others. In short, it says something about the kind of people we are. And that makes me proud to be British.

I could not agree with this sentiment more and I hope that in future years we will be able to have a conservative Prime Minister of Australia echo these sentiments in this parliament.