Comments

As Robin has pointed out the increase in staff numbers was necessary to effectively plan for and administer the planned increases in ODA to 0.5% of GNI. The 2013-14 budget identified that AusAID departmental costs would be $375m and use 6.6% of ODA (see Table 1 p11 AusAID budget papers). Applying this dollar amount of admin funding to the planned 0.5% level of ODA results in an admin to ODA ratio of 4.9%. The most recent OECD DAC statistics report that the (weighted) average level of administrative costs was 4.8% for all DAC donors (DAC Table 13: Comparison of flows by type in 2011)

There are various ways to slice and dice the numbers but the overall message is the government is clearing the way for significant cuts to staff. For instance, the 251% figure I cited in the story wasn't one that I came up with based on AusAID annual reports -- it was from a government spreadsheet showing the increase in full-time equivalents from 2008-08 to 2013-14. To be precise, from 674 to 1944 full-time equivalents. When I checked the annual reports I obviously found different numbers. And the numbers differ again depending on whether you include locally-engaged staff (as I did but you didn't). The numbers in the annual report showed a rise of more than 200% (including locally-engaged staff) so I used that. This only matters in terms of what is driving government policy here. The government is clearly preparing the ground for staff cuts -- possibly redundancies -- and that is the thrust of the story. I think it would be mistaken to dismiss the government comments in the story too lightly -- e.g. "Cormann’s remarks were striking but perhaps ephemeral." They're actually a very grim sign for AusAID staff. Whether you believe in spending more or less on foreign aid, and whether you prefer Labor or the Coalition, the comments in the story should be taken as a signal of government intent. regards David

Margaret, It would be good to also keep a balance on the way foreigners who also gain from big mining projects in PNG. I work for a mining company and I tell you the salaries paid to expatriates who you claim to be 7.3% of the workforce, are paid higher than those qualified nationals who make up 92.7%. I suggest you also use the same methods to do a similar case study on the benefits foreigners gain from the big mining companies as well rather than imposing big development benefits on PNG when we know all our river systems are destroyed by mining.

...of course he reason for the sharp rise is two-fold, one is the security crisis of 2001-2005 (now diminished) and the second is the rise of BRIC donors (mainly China) through the 2000s to date. The question is do the DAC donors have the stomach for or care for an aid/influence fight with the non-DAC donors and aid recipients on the nature and direction of third world development, and do the voting public care.

Stephen, Thanks for pointing out the difference a few words, or even the order of a few words, can make to our understanding of the objective of the aid program. I was very enthusiastic about the objective of the aid program coming out of the Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness which actually put people in there for the first time, not just countries. However, from this outsider's perspective, this very fundamental change to the objective didn't ultimately have a major impact on policies and programs which were delivered. As Jane Thomason has said "I’m less concerned about how the government frame their aid policy and more concerned about how that translates into development programs on the ground that change people’s lives." This is not to say that the objective does not matter. You haven't commented on the sentence after the objective in the Secretary of DFAT’s memo: "It [the aid program] will be designed and implemented to support Australian foreign and trade policy". This seems to be the key to how the objective is intended to be implemented. The Coalition’s Foreign Policy statement, released ahead of the election, sets out areas of focus, such as Women’s leadership, which one can assume will be taken forward through the aid program and it emphasises “strong and effective relationships with our neighbourhood”. This is an area where the aid program has always played a role and it will be important to remember that this cannot only be at a government to government level. Governments change and enduring relationships must exist on many levels. The Coalition’s Foreign Policy goes on to state “The coalition will ensure Australia’s economic interests underpin the operations of DFAT. There will be an unambiguous focus on promoting the interests of Australian businesses abroad.” The elevation of business interests and economic diplomacy to a core objective of Australian International Policy is a theme which echoes across both this statement and the Coalition’s Trade Policy Statement. It seems likely from these documents that under the Abbott Government, Australia’s economic interests will be an important driver of the aid program into the future. The key issue then becomes the extent to which short-term economic interests or long-term, less certain interests, dominate. As a long term investment, reducing poverty and improving living conditions for the poorest people in our region will promote our economic interests. I hope this long term view is not crowded out by short term considerations such as using aid to seal trade deals in the short term.

Who'd want to be a public servant! Mumbo jumbo masquerading as public policy.

The advantage of (F) is that the definition of national interest is a strategic/political one (assuming it refers to sectors and geography) while the rest is one a set of principles which should be bi-partisan,and it is the balance among the national interest(s) (and perhaps 'direct growth' or 'direct poverty reduction') issues that is ideological.

Thanks for the reference Jane, we'll be sure to check it out.

Hi Ron, Thanks for the comments. The blog highlights some of the preliminary results from the PEPE survey. We’re still in the early stages of data analysis, which has been focused on outputs (we’ve got at least another year of analysis still to come). Over the next few months we’ll be examining how the schools we visited faired in terms of student performance, and we’ll look at some of the drivers of education outcomes. Having said this, the preliminary results do augment our understanding about the condition of schools and health facilities, and how this has changed over the past decade. Policy makers are finding these results useful. Our findings have informed debate around the new free health policy, and the Acting Education Secretary has said he’ll use the results to argue for a prioritisation of education funding. You can hear the Acting Education Secretary talk about the findings of the PEPE study here: http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/png-government-tackling-shortage-of-thousands-of-teachers/1203380 Cheers, Grant

Hi Stephen, as I said, I do enjoy the devpolicy blog with my morning coffee. After 30 years in international development on all sides of the fence, I am both a pragmatist and a realist. After two years in the UN System recenty I have wordsmithing fatigue. How many policy statements have we seen over the years that are not implemented, or not implemented with fidelity to their intent? .... I think the government have been broadly clear about their intent - and I and the other pragmatists amongst us will look forward to how this unfolds in the field. ... And of course to the next devpolicy blog with our morning coffee!

It is disappointing to see that in the presentation of the results from the survey on the changes in Education over the past decade in PNG that there was no measurement of the learning outcomes from the increased expenditure. There are many other measures of outputs shown, such as enrolments, student attendance, and teacher behaviour. But there is no measurement of the most important outcome--whether students improved in the Three Rs. In his latest book, "Schoolin Ain't Learnin", Lant Pritchett reports that enrolments, attendance, and such have been increasing across the developing world. But reading levels have not improved at all!! I would have thought that the main lesson from studies on the effectiveness of aid--that we have to measure outcomes--would have been learnt by now.

Thanks for these comments. Good to have this conversation. I'll respond to all of you here. Jane - You don't think that how the government frames its aid policy connects to impact on the ground? I do. Clarity matters. Michael - I completely agree with you. The earlier formulations made it sound like there were no tradeoffs between the different objectives by putting them at different levels. Ashlee - I think that reverting to the Downer language fits in with the reintegration of AusAID into DFAT. DFAT's main objective is to promote the national interest. It now runs aid. So aid becomes something to further the national interest. This just shows that if the integration of AusAID into DFAT is going to be deep, as seems to be the case, it can only succeed if DFAT changes as well as AusAID. I note that Canada, now that it has been through its integration of aid and foreign affairs now has a Department for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development. If AusAID is really to be abolished, then so should we. Ashlee and Jason - Yes, interesting that it is not sustainable economic growth or development in the taskforce formulation but just economic growth. But we can get too hung up with adjectives attached to growth: as someone said today, it's meant to be inclusive, pro-poor and balanced as well as sustainable. And brevity is a virtue. Jo - I agree that normative choices are involved. My normative choice is reflected in my preference for formulation (F) above (G). And of course other normative positions are possible as well. But the choice or the debate should be about how important we want the different objectives to be, not about what the motivations (or higher-level objectives) are behind those objectives. I agree that national interest is a vague term, and that it can be helpful to break it up into strategic/diplomatic interests and commercial interests (which is what I do in the end). But, however vague, the national interest is what is good for Australia. At the higher of my two levels, you can debate whether compassion is a separate motivation to national interest. I think it is, but as I argue it doesn't really matter for aid decisions. At the level of objectives, certainly development and the national interest can pull in different directions.