Posted: January 17, 2005

A Generous Nation?

In recent weeks, much has been made of the generosity of Australia (and Australians) in providing public funding and private donations to support humanitarian relief and rebuilding efforts in communities ravaged by the tsunami of December 26, 2004. I suspect the Prime Minister may regard the following line of thinking as "un-Australian" but I feel it is important to reflect on the conditions under which we are generous, and whether we can make any claims to being a "generous nation" when poverty and death are not caused by the scourges of earth, fire, air or water; by the so-called "natural" disasters for which nobody can be blamed. For more on our selective approach to apportioning blame see Bill's blog of December 30, 2004. I share his perspective but will raise some different issues here.

Why does the scale of desolation have to be so large and so visible before our government is prepared to significantly increase assistance for the provision of clean drinking water, medical supplies and assistance (to subdue preventable disease), and the building or re-building of education systems for the young? I would be interested in hearing your views on this question and think it would make an excellent PhD thesis! I also note that many of our indigenous communities are crying out for the same kind of our help.

A quick look at the data shows how mean we are in the provision of foreign aid in both desolate, and somewhat less desolate, times. A Parliamentary Library Research Note of May 2004 provides some excellent data and breakdowns. The paper by Dr Ravi Tomar is available HERE.

Tomar shows that Australia's Official Development Assistance (ODA) to Gross National Income (GNI) ratio has fallen from 0.29 per cent in 1999-2000 to a budget estimate of 0.26 per cent in 2004-05. The actual ONA:GNI ratio for 2004-05 may increase depending on the extent of Tsunami-related expenditure undertaken by July 2005. The salient point is that we remain miles away from the United Nations 0.7 per cent GNI target, even with the $1b aid package to Indonesia (half of which comprises loans) factored in. We are hardly a "generous nation" and countries like Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Luxembourg put us to shame. The United States is even meaner than Australia suggesting that the "Coalition of the Unwilling" is a more accurate name for this pact we have.

Tomar's paper also documents an important shift in the composition of Australia's ODA away from expenditure on poverty alleviation and towards expenditure on governance and counter-terrorism measures. While good governance is critical if we are to ensure that assistance reaches those in need, expenditure on governance should be regarded as a long-term investment and should not come at the expense of urgent health and education measures. But this is exactly what is happening.

In 1999-2000, 15 per cent of the ODA budget was allocated to governance, 27 per cent to education and 14 per cent to health. In 2004-05 the budgeted shares were 33 per cent, 14 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively. That is some compositional shift. It is also a very "ungenerous" one.

Blog entry posted by bill