Comments

Hi Joel, Thanks for the comment. I completely agree with you on your point of health aid, and it's worrying to see both Sachs and Gates running in this direction. I suppose it's because health provides the most easily quantifiable results, and as you say the impact has been huge. Let's hope they both can diversify their examples of successful aid in the coming years. Jonathan

Thanks Jonathan. I thought the letter was great. Helped confirm that I am and want to remain an optimist! Between this and Sachs's recent "The Case for Aid" in Foreign Policy, it's nice to see a bit of a vigorous response to the naysayers who now flippantly dismiss aid as a contributor to the development we have seen to date. I do notice however that both Gates and Sachs put a lot of emphasis on the effectiveness of health aid and there is less vocal support and argumentation for the effectiveness of aid to other sectors. I agree that health aid has achieved invaluable impacts but I wouldn't want the aid story to become one of "health aid works, the rest not so much." Joel

Hi Cait I certainly hope the Australian media can use this and other resources to stimulate debate about the impact of government policies and (in)actions on fragile economies and societies in the region.

Thanks for this feedback Michael and also for adding to the historical context.

Hi Marianne, Thanks for the comment. The <a href="http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/Resources-and-Media/Annual-Letters-List" rel="nofollow">past five</a> letters have been written by Bill Gates, and it was only this year that they swapped to the co-author style and changed the title of the letters, so I think my opening sentence still stands. Cheers, Jonathan

Gates Annual Letters, not Bill Gates. For the record.

This is an excellent piece with the one reservation that is neglects the 20th Century history - lead by Australia and New Zealand - that created the Nauru we see today. Most people outside of Nauru are unaware of the extraordinary robbery that went on (and in Banaba) to steal the nation's riches and leave it an environmental disaster - long before anybody had heard of global warming. The horror of the Japanese treatment of the Nauruans is virtually forgotten - but when a small group of people, around 10,000, are systematically brutalised over a century, we can hardly express surprise at the outcome. Of course, Australia has shamefully continued to treat Nauruans as a subject people and the consequences are what we see today. Australians could usefully refer to the line "...whatever one sows, that will he also reap..."

Thanks Tess for this incisive piece - hopefully some members of the Australian media read it.

According to the table of cuts published by The Australian, which was leaked to Greg Sheridan for re-front-page story on the morning of the announcement, there will be a further $44 million cut in next year's budget (although this is obviously not locked in stone). Unlike the table officially released by DFAT, this <a href="http://resources.news.com.au/files/2014/01/17/1226804/429431-140118-aus-file-aid.pdf" rel="nofollow">early version</a> [pdf] includes comparisons between 2012-13 spending, the ALP's 2013 budget and the latest cuts. At a time that the 2013-14 budget for the Pacific islands region has been cut from $943.7 million to $882.2 million, it is noticeable that the only country that did not receive a reduction is Nauru - given the current political and legal chaos, this is an understandable but regrettable misdirection of so-called development funding. Given that AusAID's former deputy director-general served as co-chair of the board of the green climate fund until October 2013, and Australian officials played a crucial role in developing the mandate, structure and operations of this innovative multilateral funding mechanism, the government's decision to reduce all climate financing through multilateral agencies is all the more astonishing.

Thanks for the correction: no not 'most' but there is a $90m NGO Africa program (~$20m p.a.) which might be afftected; and it will be interesting how much scholarships will be afftected. The $20m culs to NGO and volunteer progams seems to evenly split at $10m each. Given it seems the subsidy scheme won't be cut at all, then that $10m will come out of bilateral programs NGOs are engaged in, the main one being Africa. CARE have put their cut at $0.5m. I suspect it will be similar for the other large NGO which are part of these programs.

Hi Patrick, I don't have the numbers because I don't think they have ever been transparently released but I do not think that "most" of the Africa program bi-lateral funding is directed through NGOs. It certainly is a chunk but there is a huge amount that goes to scholarships (about a 1000 scholarships per year) plus lots to the Australia-Africa Partnership Facility, plus things like funding to Ethiopia's multi-donor health fund, South Sudan's multi-donor health fund, funding through DFID to Zimbabwe food security (some of which does end up in NGO hands), and other programs. I'm sure NGO funding will face some of the cuts but I did want to clarify that point. Cheers, Joel

As predicted, the Fiji situation is being keenly watched by many. Yesterday, on the Interpreter, Jenny Hayward-Jones <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/01/21/Fiji-An-election-in-2014-and-Bainimarama-will-stand.aspx" rel="nofollow">looked at</a> what the response options might be for Australia and earlier in the week, there were <a href="http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2014/January/01-21-23.htm" rel="nofollow">comments</a> from China indicating that they don't want to see their enhanced relationship with Fiji be affected by what might happen later in the year.