30th April, 2006
DAVID ADAMS

A new report has sounded a warning about Australia’s overseas aid budget, claiming that fears about terrorism and ‘failed states’ dominated recent increases in our country’s aid budget at the expense of heath and education initiatives.

The World Vision report - Does Aid Work? - found that funding for law and justice increased by 930 per cent over the last five years and governance initiatives increased by more than 58 per cent while spending on basic health and basic education has only increased by four and 18 per cent respectively.

It also shows that while Australia provides relatively high levels of funding to small countries in the Pacific Ocean, our nation doesn’t give sufficient to our neighbours in South East Asia. Statistics show that although South East Asia contains 95 per cent of our immediate region’s “very poor people” - that is, those living on less than $US 1 a day, half of all Australian aid goes to Pacific nations compared to just over 30 per cent going to South East Asia.

“Australia’s concern with better law and justice in the Pacific, as important as that is, must be complemented by concern to improve health and education also,” the report says. “These are key needs in their own right and critical to improved economic growth.”

World Vision’s chief executive, Tim Costello, adds that “while impoverished nations may need funding to help their police or their bureaucrats, it will do little if we don’t also help desperately poor people feed or educate their children or stop them dying from preventable diseases or dirty drinking water”.

The report also urges a greater involvement of local people in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of Australia’s aid programs and says that while at least 80 per cent of Australia’s bilateral aid budget is spent on Australian sourced goods and services, such assistance “can often be provided much more cheaply and more effectively by local people who know the local needs better and are more likely to be committed to sustainable improvements in their country”.

Elsewhere, addressing the issue of whether aid works, the report concludes that while aid is not a “cure-all” for the developing world’s problems, it has often played an effective role in reducing suffering and promoting development.

It cites a number of ways in which aid has combined with economic development and technology to help improve life in the developing world - such as reducing child mortality from 20.5 million death of children aged under five in 1960 to 10.5 million in 2004.

“The gains in human development...have been achieved through a complex mix of domestic action, technological improvements, economic growth and international aid,” the report says.

“However the role of aid should not be discounted in this mix. Aid has been instrumental in improving health and education, in providing greater access to human rights, building democracy, protecting the environment, increasing economic growth in some countries and improving equity in access to services.”

The report calls for a number of changes to be made to improve aid. These include increasing the aid levels of OECD donors from the current level of .26 per cent of gross national income to the agreed target of .7 per cent and increasing co-operation between donor nations as the world works to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

On the latter point, World Vision suggest that if Australia was to give just .5 per cent of its GNI by 2010, “it could save the lives of 100,000 children, deliver drinking water to 20 million people and prevent 33,000 deaths from AIDS and tuberculosis each year”.

~ www.worldvision.com.au/news/onebigvillage/

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