Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise to contribute to the tabling of the report, Partnering for the greater good. Like Senator Gallacher, I also participated in this inquiry and I would like to provide the Senate with my views on some of the recommendations and the way forward. As Senator Gallacher has said, there were some 37 useful recommendations that the committee provided in this report, after a lengthy inquiry process with a number of submitters and a number of hearings, where we heard from various organisations—businesses, government bodies and the like.

The report does find that for aid to be effectively encouraged though from the private sector to assist economic growth and development, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade should establish an effective private sector and philanthropic communication and engagement unit. It is my hope that the government really consider that recommendation and actually consider the department of foreign affairs establishing such a unit. The idea of that unit is to provide a clear pathway for potential partners and for Australia's overseas diplomatic missions to more effectively identify opportunities, support more small business and encourage partnerships, all in the Indo-Pacific region but at that local level.

If you think about who some of those small business partnerships might be, I would imagine that a lot of them would be run by women. I hope the government will look at that recommendation about DFAT establishing this philanthropic communication and engagement unit because there is a real opportunity here for Australia to play a more crucial role in supporting the rights of women in the Indo-Pacific region. In fact, we provide an entire chapter on that issue, in chapter 4, where we talk in a very detailed way about women being empowered through a thriving private sector. There are a number of recommendations in that area.

The report also recommends to the Australian government that it should directly invest in innovation technology across the region and participate in or support joint ventures between the private and public sectors, and wherever possible ensure technology transfer and local contractors are engaged.

Even though I do commend the recommendations in this report—and the Joint Foreign Affairs and Aid Subcommittee has provided decent recommendations here for the government to take-up—unfortunately, I have to highlight that this is all against the backdrop of an incredible cut to our foreign aid budget. I do not want to see this report regarded by government in any way, shape or form as an opportunity for them to relinquish their responsibilities as a government in the foreign affairs portfolio to provide foreign aid and aid and development.

Whilst, yes, the private sector do and can play an ongoing role in providing aid and development in the Indo-Pacific region, and we provide a number of recommendations about how that can occur, it should never do so in a sense to replace the role of government in its own aid and development program. That is the caveat that I put in support of this report, that this government actually lifts up its socks and starts doing what it should do as a strong, democratic country in the region to provide for the aid and development of the Indo-Pacific. Unfortunately, that is not occurring at the moment. We know the government has confiscated some $11 billion from Australia's aid budget, the biggest cut this government has made on record thus far.

Compare that to the United Kingdom. The new high commissioner to the UK recently addressed this very committee

We know that the UK passed a law in March enshrining its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of its gross national income on aid every year, making it the first G7 country to meet the UN's 45-year-old aid spending target. Despite the global financial crisis, the UK has continued to provide its aid and development funding in the world. At the same time as the Australian Prime Minister describes our aid cuts as 'modest'. Australia is in a significantly better economic position than as the UK, yet we are cutting our aid budget by some $11 billion. This means that Australia has an income per person more than 50 per cent higher than that of the UK and has only 20 per cent of the level of government debt that the UK has, yet it provides only one-fifth of the level of aid. That says a lot about the Abbott government's commitment to the Indo-Pacific region.

Whilst I commend the report to the report to the Senate, in relation to the role of the private sector in aid and development, I condemn this government for relinquishing its responsibilities in the aid and development budget to the Indo-Pacific region. I hope it lifts its game and starts to live up to a better reputation than it currently has.