Guy Barnett (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to table my Vietnam and Singapore study tour report: Australia’s overseas aid, the work of World Vision and tackling the obesity epidemic.

Leave granted.

I rise tonight to speak in support of the Millennium Development Goals and the Make Poverty History campaign. I note that it is a little over 12 months since this Senate unanimously passed a motion of support for the Millennium Development Goals, urging the Australian government to recommit itself to the achievement of those goals. I had the honour of proposing that motion, with the support of Senator Grant Chapman, Senator Ursula Stephens and Senator Helen Polley.

Today is a special day because it is the day of the STAND UP event across the country. STAND UP is an international antipoverty event of 2006. It is an attempt to set a Guinness world record for the most number of people ever to physically stand up against poverty. It occurred today on the lawns of Parliament House at around lunchtime, and there were many members of parliament there. I thank and acknowledge all of those members of parliament who were there and those who supported the campaign but were unable to be at the event.

Likewise, last night at the Canberra Baptist Church, which I attended, and yesterday at the Launceston City Baptist Church, people were making efforts to support this particular STAND UP event and to support the Make Poverty History campaign. Mark Townsend and his team at the Launceston City Baptist Church were organising letters to federal members of parliament to encourage them and to thank them for their support for the Millennium Development Goals.

Today in my hometown of Launceston, in the city park, there was an event organised by the Make Poverty History campaign, including Grant Maynard and Ben McKinnon as local representatives of the campaign. Ben McKinnon is a Scripture Union representative who stimulated me into action some years ago. My wife, Kate, was there today. She was with one of my daughters, Alice Barnett, and her grade 5 class, to support the Make Poverty History campaign.

I want to congratulate and thank the Make Poverty History campaign team around Australia, and all those who were involved in this tremendously successful event, specifically, Amanda Jackson and Ben Thurley. I note that there is an exhibition currently in place in Parliament House which will be launched tomorrow. It is called the create to advocate 2006 art exhibition, and the official opening is at lunchtime tomorrow. It is presented by the Micah Challenge and Make Poverty History. I toured it this afternoon, and it is quite impactive and moving.

The Make Poverty History campaign and the Micah Challenge are based around Micah, a book in the Old Testament, chapter 6, verse 8, which states:

... what does the Lord require of thee but to act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

In this day and age there is a lot of discussion about tolerance and the importance of it. I think that, as a community and as a people in Australia, we should breed an intolerance of poverty. It would seem that this is an almost insurmountable problem to overcome, when you have some 30,000 children dying every day from hunger and starvation around the world. However, I believe it is a vision thing. As the good book says, without a vision the people will perish. I agree that probably the most potent weapon a leader can have is to provide vision—that is, to provide hope. Micah, chapter 6, verse 8 is that vision.

I note and acknowledge the Millennium Development Goals and overseas development aid. It must be carefully targeted, especially in our region, where two-thirds of the world’s poor are. In Asia, 712 million people live on less than $1 per day, as do 314 million people in Africa. As I said, every day 30,000 children die from preventable causes. Nearly 11 million children under the age of five die every year. One woman dies every minute as a result of pregnancy and childbirth complications. More than 500,000 women die in childbirth each year. Each day 58,000 people die from hunger and easily preventable diseases, 30,000 of them children.

One in five children in the developing world does not have access to safe drinking water. One hundred and three million children of primary school age do not attend school. Nearly a billion people entering the 21st century are unable to read a book or sign their names. The gross domestic product of the poorest 48 nations, a quarter of the world’s countries, is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined. Developed countries spend more than $350 billion each year on subsidies for their farmers, the equivalent of the entire combined income of Africa. Every cow in Europe now begets $US2 in subsidies, which is most revealing.

I am pleased to have been working in support of the Millennium Development Goals and the Make Poverty History campaign now for some years. I thank, for all their efforts, the many non-government organisations—churches and other community groups—who support and encourage them. The first Millennium Development Goal—to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger—has two aims: to reduce by half the number of people living on less than $1 a day and to reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.

I would like to refer to my Vietnam and Singapore study tour report of some 11 pages and point out that Australia has made a very valuable contribution with respect to Vietnam. Total official development assistance to Vietnam this financial year is estimated at $81.5 million. Vietnam is AusAID’s fourth largest Australian bilateral aid program after Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and the Solomon Islands. Australia is currently the 11th largest donor and ninth largest bilateral donor to Vietnam.

However, Vietnam is not heavily aid dependent, with net overseas development aid being only 4.5 per cent of its gross national income in 2003. And this is good news: poverty has halved from 58 per cent of the population in 1993 to an estimated 24 per cent in 2004. Likewise, gross domestic product per person has more than tripled since 1990 to $US646 in 2006.

Australia was one of the first donors to resume a major aid program to Vietnam in 1991. The My Thuan bridge has been our largest single infrastructure project, with an Australian contribution of $A60 million. This bridge provides a key transport link which benefits 60 million people in the Mekong Delta. My report refers to the Millennium Development Goals and Targets, outlining the eight goals and the 18 targets.

I want to thank Ambassador Bill Tweddell at the Australian embassy in Hanoi and in particular his AusAID team: Ms Misha Coleman, Ms Susan McKeag, Simon Cramp and Andrea Flew. I had valuable meetings with the UN Development Program representatives to discuss Vietnam’s progress against the Millennium Development Goals. They are progressing well in Vietnam. We met with over a dozen Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development at the embassy, hosted by Ambassador Tweddell. The value of the program should not be underestimated and the opportunities for mutual benefits arising are substantial.

I have set out in my report details of the various opportunities for volunteering overseas. These include the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development program, the Australian Business Volunteers program, the Australian Volunteers International program and Volunteers for International Development from Australia. For further information, people should contact the Australian Agency for International Development on (02)62064000. They can also have a look at my study tour report as well as my other report in support of volunteers entitled ‘How we can help our volunteers’ on my website www.guybarnett.com.

Finally, I want to congratulate World Vision on their work both in Vietnam and more broadly. I met the World Vision Vietnam manager, Daniel Selvanayagam, and many of his 100 employees, and also Ian Curtis, the manager from Singapore. They provided a tremendous contribution in Vietnam. The work of World Vision in Australia and elsewhere should not be underestimated. They are the largest aid and humanitarian organisation. I congratulate World Vision’s chief executive, Tim Costello, and its former chairman, Peter King, for the work that they do. With the support of around 350,000 Australians, World Vision helped almost 12 million people this year. World Vision are committed to the poor because they are Christian. Their commitment means that they will work with all cultures. (Time expired)