Comments

A very powerful and logical analysis of the current crisis. Well articulated!!

I welcome the debate about aid to Africa and look forward to joining it on my return to Australia. I acknowledge Joel's commitment and knowledge on this issue. However, I want to take issue with one point. The aid budget was not "political cover for our miners". The companies were there before our aid involvement and did not seek our assistance. The engagement arose at the request of African governments who acknowledged our expertise and from a sense of obligation to help with the governance, taxation, environmental and social issues arising from the proliferation of our companies in the region.

Re that statue, both things are true. The money came from DFAT and was part of our ODA -- the part not managed by the former AusAID. Hence the incongruity of Greg Sheridan's criticism, last year, of the latter organisation for allocating funds for this project as well as for onshore asylum-seeker costs, etc. Update: Garth Luke has pointed out to me that a DFAT Senate Estimates brief released under the FOI Act states that the $150,000 contribution 'was not ODA eligible'. That's certainly true. The brief does not deny that the contribution was drawn from DFAT's Direct Aid Program allocation, which seems highly likely since the grant was well beyond what DFAT can normally afford from its meagre non-ODA resources. And it is silent on how the contribution was actually handled in Australia's statistical reporting to the OECD Development Cooperation Directorate.

Thanks Joel for raising the important issue of which countries should receive our aid. Surveys of the Australian public (eg the sequence of AusAID Newspoll surveys and the latest Lowy Poll) indicate that Australians overwhelmingly believe need should be the primary criterion for directing assistance. There is a huge range in total global aid per extremely poor person across the countries of the Indo-Pacific Region – going from just $4 per poor person in India to over $2,000 per poor person in several Pacific countries. At the low end of the scale one could ask what could possibly be achieved and at the high end, what harm is being done with so much aid (if it actually gets there)? Comparing total global aid per poor person across the sub-regions of the Indo-Pacific is also quite interesting: US$ per poor person in 2012 Pacific 370 South-East Asia 79 South Asia 27 East Africa 117 Source: Povcalnet (headcount of those on <$1.25 a day) and OECD DAC, aid recipient countries only included. Perhaps as well as a greater focus on East Africa, Australia should increase its support for South Asia. The average aid per poor person for South Asia increases to US$95 when India is excluded from the calculation, however I’m not sure why one would do that as Indian per capita income is only around half that of Indonesia or Timor-Leste and is home to a quarter of all the children that die each year around the world. Also Robin may know better, but I think the contribution to the anti-slavery statue at the UN came from DFAT and was not part of our ODA.

When visiting the APH website, I just noted that the deadline for submissions to this inquiry has been extended until August 29 2014. So if you missed the previous May deadline, there is plenty of time to <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joint/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/Human_Rights" rel="nofollow">make a submission now</a>.

Hi Robin, Thanks. I agree that you can get to the 90% benchmark through a few permutations - including Pakistan and Afghanistan and regional Asia for example. But then, as you note, there is no reason to change the definition of "our region" and it becomes a purely semantic exercise. With that definition, the increase to a 90% benchmark is up from about 87% - hardly a big change. The suggestion that the definition is not fine-grained is probably true but a bit strange considering that there is a benchmark. If the definition is "whatever group of countries allows us to meet the 90%", then it is not a very helpful indicator. Irrespective of the definition, I still believe that there is merit in an African aid program especially aligned with Australia's trade efforts and national interest. The lack of specificity and lack of an ocean-centric definition then opens up engagement in Zimbabwe and South Sudan - two countries where Australia has special links and could engage more deeply (as Bob Cumming suggests).

I enjoyed reading and learning from what others thought about RAMSI and its impact on Solomon Islands.

Joel, The question is a very good one: the vagueness about the term 'Indo-Pacific' is puzzling and unnecessary. However, I'm less sure of the logic underlying your effort to determine its extension in terms of aid recipient countries and, in particular, your conclusion that it must include some part of Africa. One point is that I can see no reason to assume that the term is ocean-centric or, in Wikipedia's parlance, 'biogeographic'. At most one might exclude Afghanistan, as you do, even though it is often considered part of the South Asia grouping, but all the core countries of South Asia would, I am sure, be in. That includes Pakistan, which you have as a 'maybe'. And the South and West Asia Regional allocation, which you also have as a 'maybe', should almost certainly be included, alongside the regional allocations for the Pacific and East Asia. A second point is that, based on the government's 2014-15 budget estimates, you can get to 94 per cent of bilateral (and regional) aid merely by adding together allocations to the Pacific, East Asia, and South and West Asia regions. The conclusion that some part of Africa must be included therefore doesn’t hold. Taking Afghanistan out would move the total down to 89 per cent but that suggests to me that Afghanistan is in, not that some part of Africa is in. In short, I imagine that the approach is not at all fine-grained and that there are simply three regions which don’t count toward the 90 per cent target: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. I would think the second of these regions is out under any scenario and should not be in a ‘maybe’ list. Why substitute 'Indo' for 'Asia' then? If the term 'Indo-Pacific' does not in fact include some of the countries of eastern Africa, I really don't know. It is a recently-coined piece of geostrategic jargon, and is used in the Natalegawa speech linked above, and in the 2013 Defence White Paper, to refer to a triangle whose corners are India, Japan and Australia. In the aid context, if it doesn't add eastern Africa, it adds nothing. One other, unrelated point: to be fair to DFAT, I think it would be more correct to describe the UN Security Council campaign as Rudd-driven. DFAT could be accused of getting carried away in carrying out the wishes of the government of the day, for example by using aid funds for the now-infamous Ark of Return statue in New York City, but we cannot know that DFAT urged the Rudd government to enter a race that, for Australia's two competitors, had begun some years earlier.

Nice piece Joel. South Sudan, although not "lapped by the warm waters of the Indian Ocean", is one African country with which our aid program really needs to continue to be engaged. The fact that there are 30,000 South Sudanese Australians, by far the largest group of black Africans in the country, is a compelling reason for us to be involved there. It's the only country in Africa that I have been to where people know anything at all about Australia!

Patrick -- In short, microfinance is included in the more inclusive measure we used, as support for 'Informal/semi-formal financial intermediaries' falls under 'economic infrastructure and services' in DAC statistics. It is not included in the narrower measure. I don't know how reliable the reporting is on this type of aid (some of it, for example, might end up under a rural development or cottage industries heading) but Australia was among the top few donors in 2012 in terms of the share of its aid allocated to microfinance. The absolute amount was not huge at $US45 million, but was well up on previous years. Paul -- Yes, it's true that Australia still has a stake in the AECF, though I don't know how fresh our most recent contribution is. It's easy to say that such multi-donor initiatives are still current even if the bills have long been paid, but that's not an important point. More important is the fact that Australia was not active in the design process for the AECF and does not appear to be very actively engaged in the oversight or evaluation of it. In fact, I am not sure what evaluations of it there might have been. Despite DFID's reputation for transparency, it is devilishly hard to find out anything about the details and impacts of AECF-funded investments. Australia's ECF was quite the model of transparency, making all sorts of information about its progress and impacts available, warts and all.

I won’t attempt a review, but will make a few points about the evaluation. I thought it was a clear, thorough and balanced piece which, as you imply above, was either not supplied with punch lines or had them confiscated downstream. I was struck by a few things. First, the evaluation picked up on something that had bothered me last year, which I raised in <a href="http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/commjnt/369601b0-9b29-484e-8b48-157e4605a18a/toc_pdf/Parliamentary%20Joint%20Committee%20on%20Foreign%20Affairs,%20Defence%20and%20Trade_2013_05_22_1957_Official.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/commjnt/369601b0-9b29-484e-8b48-157e4605a18a/0000%22" rel="nofollow">testimony</a> (pdf) to the 2013 parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s relations with Timor-Leste. Australia finally got an aid strategy in place in 2009 but then before two years had passed entered into a separate ‘planning agreement’ with the government of Timor-Leste. In theory the strategic framework for Australia’s aid was, from that point forward, provided by both of these things. In practice, as the evaluation notes, the planning agreement superseded the strategy. This was unfortunate both because the planning agreement was even flimsier than the strategy but also, and more importantly, because it discarded references to some not unimportant things like gender equality, support for civil society and (not mentioned as a gap by the evaluation) anti-corruption and integrity. The result of a worthy determination to accord fully with the stated priorities of the government of Timor-Leste’s national development plan, the adoption of the planning agreement tended to discredit the prior strategy development process, including the notion that it reflected an intersection of the two government’s priorities. The evaluation, however, has nothing to say about this in its recommendations. Second, the evaluation is damning about or, more exactly, reflects others’ damning assessments of, the performance of multilateral organisations as delivery agents for programs financed or co-financed by Australia (‘mixed but generally poor results’). The conclusion drawn from this is effectively that Australia should use such channels less. But Australia has a stake in the performance of these organisations regardless of whether it is channelling country program funds to them. Australia is involved in their governance and will also have to deal with them as increasingly important co-donors, now that Timor-Leste has now commenced borrowing on concessional terms from the multilateral development banks. One might have hoped for a recommendation that DFAT should play an active and ongoing role in monitoring and seeking to influence the performance of these organisations in this and other fragile states in our region. And third, the evaluation gives less attention that it could have to the things that matter—it is lacking in proportionality. The Timor-Leste Police Development Program implemented by the Australian Federal Police is flagged as the single largest bilateral aid activity over the life of the program ($110 million over eight years), yet the impact assessment provided is that ‘there is some evidence that TLPDP is making a difference to technical policing skills, management and administrative competence’ (DFAT’s response?—‘Australian Government agencies are independently accountable for management of their own appropriations’). The police development program is treated in no more depth than much smaller activities. In addition, the failure of Australia’s aid program to allocate adequate resources to private sector development which, among other things, might have limited the impact of the much-lauded Seeds of Life program, is noted but neither explored nor adequately reflected in the evaluation’s recommendations, which focus only on the problem of unemployment.

Nice to see the issues clearly defined in this post. On a small point, while the Enterprise Challenge Fund for Asia and the Pacific has indeed closed, Australia has also invested (to an even larger extent) in the multi-donor funded Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund - which is still very much alive and kicking. Indeed, the AECF is arguably Australian aid's largest private sector support program at the moment.