Comments

Interesting post. I read it on the same day as I read the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s blog post on 'military readiness' http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/graph-of-the-week-how-ready-do-we-need-to-be/ Military planners also balance the security needs of the current generation with the security needs of future generations. Preferencing the security needs of today would mean paying to keep the army at high readiness rather than investing in the development fighter aircraft that won't be ready to fly for 20 years. This is roughly equivalent to establishing food distribution programs rather than doing the long-term tasks of developing new vaccines. The way military planners balance the needs of current and future needs is by thinking about contingencies. What is the risk of a security situation (contingency) developing that would require forces to be deployed at short notice. If that risk is high then troops will be kept and high readiness. However if the risk of a short-notice contingency is low then money be reprioritized into developing future military forces. If we believe that Myanmar is likely to grow at the same rate as Indonesia and Vietnam for the next 20 years then we should be put our energy into setting up cash transfer programs that can help those living in poverty today. However, if we believe the Myanmar is likely to relapse into civil war, suffer the resource curse or be crippled by corruption then we should be doing the long-term tasks of reforming government institutions. Similar contingencies could be considered for single sectors (risk drug resistance) and for the world as a whole (climate change). But the overall message is that when donors and practitioners are deciding on programs shouldn't just be weighing the relative benefits different types of programs, but the distribution of benefits in among generations.

Thanks so much for your comments Marianne. Let me respond, firstly, to your question about possible benefits from an aid policy that places more emphasis on 'economic diplomacy' (although, like you, I'm not without significant reservations). Firstly, I think such an approach can facilitate better relationships. When it is made explicit that a donor government is motivated (to some degree) by economic self-interest, development cooperation can be more credibly framed as a 'mutually beneficial partnership'. Julie Bishop's emphasis of this approach has been well received in PNG, for instance. Secondly, a commitment to development entails more than just aid. Fairer trade, investment and migration policies, which may flow from an economically-centred foreign policy, are also critical ways rich countries can help the poor. Thirdly, a focus on economic diplomacy may improve the strategic coherence of aid program, enabling closer linkages with other foreign policy goals (in Australia’s case, capitalising on the ‘Asian Century’). I agree with you that the fact a number of countries are embarking on this change doesn't necessarily make it right. What it does show, I think, is that the norms around how traditional donors 'should' provide development assistance are changing. It’s interesting to consider why prominent donors now feel more comfortably about expressing self-interested objectives. I think the rise of emerging donors explains at least part of it, as does the impact of the global financial crisis. Bilateral aid and national interests are always conflated to some degree, of course. Disentangling the self-interested and selfless motivations of donors is something scholars have been attempting for a long time, and continue to without much success. Most conclude that donor motivations are mixed. I think it’s interesting, for example that the UK’s aid program, heralded by many ‘aid for development’ proponents, is justified by both national interest and moral imperatives. Consider these two motivations for aid provided by British PM David Cameron in recent speeches: 1. Britain gives aid “because of the kind of people we are - and the kind of country we are. We are the kind of people who believe in doing what is right. We accept the moral case for keeping our promises to the world’s poorest - even when we face challenges at home.” 2. “We made the decision to protect the aid budget because I believe this commitment is in Britain’s long-term interests.”

Good analysis. That OECD report is always excellent. The fiscal impact in Chapter three is particularly good this year. Net migration rates were abnormally high in 2008-10 because of student visa settings. These have been substantially revised in 2011-12. However, the <a href="http://www.immi.gov.au/media/publications/statistics/immigration-update/nom-june-2013.pdf" rel="nofollow">latest forecasts</a> [pdf] for net migration is between 220-250,000 per year for the next 1-4 years, which is well above the last estimate in the Inter-Generational Report (180,000). This probably means another debate about 'big Australia' when IGR4 comes out. Also, the role of New Zealand migration is interesting in relation to development. The 2011 census shows big pockets of growth in Samoan, Tongan and Maori migration, which has accelerated since the turn of the century. Basically the only immigration pathway for this to occur is through New Zealand citizenship and temporary visa grants. This is supported by the <a href="http://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/statistical-info/temp-entrants/nz.htm" rel="nofollow">DIAC figures</a> on New Zealand migration, with about ~40,000 New Zealand citizens born outside of New Zealand currently living in Australia as 'temporary migrants'. Scott Morrison has raised this as an issue in the past so perhaps some policy changes are in the wings which may impact any development impact this migration is having.

This is a really interesting discussion and one that we at Monash University have engaged with quite heavily. Both Tess and Nik were at a symposium on tourism and sustainable livelihoods we conducted in Port Vila in July 2012. There is no question that if islanders are to be in a better position to participate more profitably in tourism (and cruise tourism specifically) a public-private-community sector model may well be the best way to go. Whether tourism in general has had a net-positive impact on the ground is contentious and largely unsubstantiated owing to a lack of consistent, reliable data (notwithstanding the one-off and ad hoc approaches over the years). Leaving it up to the private sector largely to enable tourism to be a vehicle for development and poverty alleviation is fraught. One of the biggest issues related to this discussion is that despite the fact we know very little about tourism's overall impact (economic and non-economic impacts), there has always been, and continues to be a great deal of enthusiasm from all quarters to promote its merits. Recently, NZAID in particular have thrown their support behind the sector. There is no question that on face-value, tourism is critical to Vanuatu's economy. However, whether it is of benefit holistically (in an economic and equally non-economic sense) is another thing. I join the line of sceptics and remain unconvinced that ni-Vanuatus have reaped an optimum return from tourism - I have been examining this issue quite closely for several years now. Growing visitor numbers and tourist expenditure does not equate to stronger development impacts on the ground. Having said that, Vanuatu is no different to the long line of developing countries that court the tourist dollar with little cognisance of what the overall "cost" is. As my good friend and former Director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre Kirk Huffman says - "tourism for tourism's sake" should not prevail. In my research, I have advocated that a more deliberate, informed policy-oriented approach to tourism expansion is needed - not more ad-hoc, piecemeal attempts. Throwing money at tourism initiatives without reconciling some of the critical knowledge gaps, underpinning issues and seemingly intractable constraints first, is poor development practice. Having said that, I remain open-minded to the possibilities.

Ben - thanks for this really useful comparative analysis of traditional donors and their trend (back) to conflating aid and national interest objectives. It shows Abbott as less radical than he might otherwise appear, if you accept the premise that turning from poverty alleviation to sustainable development (whose?) can still reasonably called an international development policy. I must say that just because everybody is doing it doesn't make it good or equitable policy. I'd like to know more. In my experience emerging donors make a big deal of mutuality and cooperation not by focussing on their own business and economic interests but on similarities of culture and level of development - and therefore their ability to offer locally appropriate, respectful aid that is more aid effective than that offered by traditional donors. The data are not always encouraging on whether they manage to do this, but the rhetoric at least has huge appeal to traditional aid recipients. It seems to me that the shift to greater national and economic self interest by donors is less a lining up with emerging donors than a return to the national interest emphasis (this time on much more explicitly - as you note) that was evident pre the 2006 Aid White Paper. Your final sentence has a lot in it - am keen to know what the benefits of the Coalition's approach might be even if sustainable economic development (for the poor) is its goal. Could it in fact create more favourable conditions for greater development effectiveness? With thanks.

Thanks for this article. It is great and a very fascinating read.

If you go to the <a href="http://www.acfid.asn.au/resources-publications/publications/community-support" rel="nofollow">ACFID website</a> there is a table of number of NGO donors/supporters per Federal seat, an interesting set of variations bewteen outer and inner city seats among others. In some inner city seats nearly half the electorate supports an NGO/s.

What is particularly interesting is that if you look at NGO aid spending from their public donations (excluding govt funding) it has been around 0.03%-0.04% of GDP since the 1970 (see Lissner 1977 "Politics of Altruism" for the early figures), a remarkably stable figure, and an interesting observation on public altruism for overseas aid.

Hi Robin, Thanks for this analysis. I am surprised to see no comments but I guess everyone is a bit shell-shocked by the announcement and/or was waiting for the election to happen before (trying) to respond. As I imagine all of devpolicy's readers, I have lots of thoughts and reactions and I am not quite ready to formulate them for public consumption. So we are all indebted to your analysis for getting started. Aid has become an easy target for cuts - not just in Australia but elsewhere as Ben Day's blog notes. Perhaps to some degree we do need to look inward as a development community and realise that we have not sold our story well enough. Much of the community continues to use the poverty reduction paradigm that gained so much voice through the MDGs and Make Poverty History campaigns. And perhaps - after a decade - that does not resonate sufficiently with the wider community. I am loath to exclusively frame aid as an instrument of foreign policy and security interests, but perhaps we as a development community need to do more thinking in that area. I was interested to see that Bob Carr's first reaction was that the aid cut would "weaken Australia's security." I will stop there as I am not sure how much space blog replies are allowed! Given that these cuts are going to happen, perhaps it is time for a devpolicy.org series on "How I would cut $4.5b from aid" so that your readers can outline where they would make cuts. It might be cathartic for some to find lots of savings in items such as returning the $375m per year from immigration to AusAID (as you suggest) and cutting all aid to any country with a GDP per capita above US$3000 (including Indonesia and Vanuatu which would save A$700m per year).

Scott - what your USP student told you was inaccurate. Rabuka's party, the Soqosoqo Vakavulewa ni Taukei (SVT) did not demand to be granted a majority in cabinet but the party did make a series of rather extravagant demands as the price for inclusion in the cabinet that the Supreme Court later in 1999 judged to amount to a refusal to participate. The true story is told in the Supreme Court judgment on the case that was later brought by SVT party leader Inoke Kubuabola - see http://www.paclii.org/fj/cases/FJSC/1999/8.html. Also if you look at some of the later court judgments on breaches of the power-sharing provisions, they at one point revisited that decision and suggested that the court might better have ruled otherwise.

The results of this survey are going be more interesting in the light of the proposed cuts by the coalition following the election. I felt the speed of the increase in recent years was perhaps too rapid to be manageable and effectively implemented. However, such cuts actually causes more volatility to the aid program, reduced efficiency and effectiveness in country by country delivery, and limited effects on the MDGs. Lets see the results soon. thank you John Whittle

Nowadays, very controversial, sad and interesting issues especially the conflicts and the political instability in our region is a boiling topic. Iam from Solomon Islands and would like to learn more about the conflicts especially in this region. As a young Solomon Islander, i want to see the young generation to seek a new pathway for a better future as we all take the leadership role from our colonial era-politicians, learn from our pasts and move forward. Hope to learn from your very informative articles in this blog site. Many thanks.