Actual education or phantom aid?

Earlier this month, I blogged about the pitiful level of Foreign Aid in the latest budget. I noted that the Australian government gives only .34% GNI as Foreign Aid, despite making international commitments to increase this to .7% GNI.

Investigative journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald have revealed that even this low level of aid is fudged. In a series of articles, Phantom Aid, they reveal that more than $600 million of Australia's foreign aid over the past two years never went overseas but was swallowed up in the coffers of a small Federal Government agency in Pitt Street, Sydney.

Examples of questionable aid identified by the Herald include:

• A $27,758 payment AusAID made to the Australian law firm Sparke Helmore for legal assistance during the Cole inquiry into legal breaches of the UN oil-for-food program has been counted as foreign aid.
• Another $81,993 described as foreign aid to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004 was an Immigration Department assistance package for temporary protection visa holders in Australia.
• Half a million dollars of last financial year's $23.4 million in aid for Nauru was to be spent on co-ordinating aid, while $1.3 million went on "logistics", providing housing, transport and other costs for Australian officials.

The following graph shows how countries rank on on their Commitment to Development.


The amount Australia contributes in Aid (the dark blue bit of each bar) is tiny, but this new information uncovered by the Herald, suggests that Australian Foreign Aid is even smaller, because the figures have been padded. The Government says that it is following the rules about what can be counted. I guess they are proud of being so mean-spirited.

One of the great things about the School of St Jude is that there is no hint of mean-spiritedness about it. The School is founded on generosity and care for others. It aims to provide actual education for bright children from the poorest families in one of the world's poorest countries. These children will benefit from the bricks and mortar school that is being built and run with your real help.

Foreign Aid in the Budget

Last night's budget allocation of $3.2 billion for overseas aid - or 0.3% of Gross National Income (GNI) - keeps them on track to being at the tail end of OECD countries. Nothing inspiring about this insipid performance.

They are proud to inch towards the goal of $4 billion by 2010 – that will be .34% of GNI.

While welcoming the undertaking, non-government aid bodies noted that a majority of other donor nations had agreed to move to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2010. And Scandinavian countries already give .7% or more of GNI in overseas aid.

Here's the longer view of Australia's official aid, from Ben's blog.

In this bonanza budget, where the government had the problem of too much money and nowhere to put it (see Ross Gittins comments), there was plenty of scope to live up to the nine values that the government requires to be taught in schools, starting with 'Care and Compassion' and 'Integrity'. Instead, they have fallen short on both.

In 2000 the PM signed on to the Millennium Declaration in 2000, agreeing that,

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected.

I guess that the PM and I differ on the meaning of 'spare no effort'. As our government is doing so little, it is up to us to do it ourselves.



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