Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak tonight about the issue of poverty. We have had a reasonable amount of media coverage in recent weeks about the latest efforts by people throughout the Australian community to reinforce that core message, the global message, to make poverty history. The important part about Make Poverty History is not just that it has some well-known and charismatic spokespeople out front—like Bono from U2—nor that it is a nice-sounding or feel-good slogan, but that it is tied to, and continually tries to reinforce support for, a globally agreed set of goals: the Millennium Development Goals. Those goals were agreed in the year 2000 by all member states of the United Nations, including Australia. There are eight Millennium Development Goals, which seek to halve global poverty and its effects.

It is a grassroots community based campaign spread around the world through a huge range of different community based organisations—secular and religious, institutional and free-ranging organisations—in developed countries and less developed countries. The campaign simply seeks to keep nations around the world to their pledges and seeks to encourage them to do whatever they need to do to meet the goals and pledges that they have already adopted. So, in one very important respect it is a knitting together of perfect examples of community based grassroots campaigns with perhaps the ultimate institutional top-down campaign of a set of goals agreed to by all member states of the United Nations. So nations and governments around the globe are agreeing to a set of goals and seeking to implement them through their societies, and people at civil society level are seeking to hold those governments to those commitments.

Seven of the goals apply principally to the developing countries and cover such areas as hunger, child mortality and access to clean water. The eighth goal—partnership for development—applies principally to developed nations such as Australia and covers action required by developed nations to help those poorer countries in their efforts to achieve the goals.

The year that is set for achieving those goals is 2015. That means six years on from the adoption of those goals we are more than a third of the way through. Developed countries like Australia are not as far down the track as we should be, given that we are six years down out of 15. We are lagging behind in moving towards meeting those goals, whether it is in development assistance, overseas aid or other measures like providing technical assistance or providing fairer trade conditions, as well as reducing debt burdens.

That is not to say by any means that Australia has done nothing; there have been some positive steps forward and I and the Democrats welcome those. I want to particularly focus in my contribution tonight on that eighth millennium development goal—developing a global partnership for development—because it is one that focuses on more than just aid; it focuses on trade.

I note that a lot of the time the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, tends to dismiss the urgings. He dismissed some of the urgings from the concerts that were held in Melbourne and the statements made by Bono, the Reverend Tim Costello and others. The Prime Minister tended to dismiss those, saying that the best thing you can do is to open up trade. That is true, but nobody is saying that it should be either/or. It should be both. They do actually intertwine—effective development assistance and fair trade. The aims of the eighth millennium development goal include developing further an open trading and financial system that is rule based, predictable and non-discriminatory, including a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction nationally and internationally.

The goal seeks to address the least developed countries’ special needs and recognises that opening up trade does not mean a level playing field where you can have zero rules and equal treatment for everybody. That is not, in effect, a level playing field; that is a playing field tilted very much towards those who are already far out in front. So we need to look at issues like tariff- and quota-free access for the exports of the least developed countries, enhanced debt relief for the heavily indebted poor countries, cancellation of official bilateral debt and more generous official development assistance for countries that are committed to poverty reduction.

We also need to look at the needs of the small island developing states—that is particularly relevant to Australia in relation to the Pacific island nations—as well as other countries that are, for example, landlocked or have other specific unique geographic or political situations. We have to look at the debt problems through national and international measures and look at, in particular, developing engagement and meaningful employment for young people. We have to ensure that pharmaceutical products and health systems are available at affordable levels for people in developing countries. And in cooperation with the private sector we need to ensure that the new technologies, particularly information and communication technologies, are available to those least developed countries.

If I reflect back on the debate we have just had about copyright law it might seem that it has nothing to do with this. What could copyright law possibly have to do with reducing global poverty? But copyright matters can be a significant barrier for poor countries to get access to information and to get access to materials, all sorts of technologies and even agricultural products that are covered by intellectual property rights.

If property rights are enforced with ruthless equality it basically means that the rich can have access to them and the poor cannot. That means that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is completely against basic justice and what the Millennium Development Goals seek to do. I again remind the Senate that these goals have been agreed to by Australia and by all member states of the United Nations.

In 1970, 22 of the world’s richest countries, including Australia, pledged to spend 0.7 per cent of their national income on aid. Thirty-six years later, only five countries have kept that promise. Australia still has no set timetable for achieving that target. We have made some improvements in the right direction, but they are not big enough or fast enough to meet that goal. I should say that many other of the world’s richest countries have increased their aid much quicker and in much greater amounts.

The United Nations has estimated that unfair trade rules deny poor countries $700 billion every year. The poorest 49 countries make up 10 per cent of the world’s population but account for only 0.4 per cent of world trade. As an example of why aid in itself is important but not sufficient, for every dollar in aid granted to developing countries more than $30 is paid back to rich countries in debt repayment. Every day, poor countries still pay over $US70 million in debt service. Debt relief means that those countries can spend more money on basic services, improve the lives of some of the world’s poorest people and build up some of the infrastructure they need to be able to compete effectively in that fair and enhanced global trading system.

It is important to emphasise that, particularly with Millennium Development Goal No. 8, it is about not only increasing aid—though I think that is still important, particularly for a country like Australia that has, quite frankly, performed well below the standard, and that includes the previous Labor government as well—but also opening up the trading systems and the financial systems, but in a way that is fair and non-discriminative and does not basically allow those with the market power to exploit further those without. It is also about reducing some of the barriers, whether debt or access to education, health and information technology services. On those things we still have a long way to go, but I know that the global campaign and the grassroots campaign in Australia will continue to pressure governments—and pressure all of us in all political parties—to give greater priority to what must surely be one of the most important issues facing us as a planet as we look at where we go over coming decades. If we do not address this, I suggest that it is the sort of thing that could really come back to bite all of us. (Time expired)