Comments

Hi Angus, Thank you for an interesting comment. When giving talks on New Zealand aid I have in the past used ODA/government spending figures myself (or ODA/government revenue). I agree this is much more meaningful to the public, allowing you to say something (at least for revenue) along the lines of "Out of every hundred dollars you pay in taxes one dollar goes to aid", or something similar. However, the measure has two limitations. 1. For international comparisons, countries making the same aid effort, may end up with different results simply because of the government structure they have. For example, the figure in your chart is, I presume aid spend/*federal* Australian government spend. But in New Zealand where we don't have a state government system the only number we can really use is aid spend/total government spend, which leads to a lower ratio (that and the fact that we give less aid). This isn't an insurmountable problem, but would need to be carefully considered in cross country analysis. 2. Countries can always fund aid increases through raising taxes. Indeed, rather than take the money from social services as home, this is how I would prefer my government did do this. However, your measure gives countries no credit to countries that fund more aid by having higher taxes and higher total govt spending. The US would appear considerably better on your measure vis a vis Sweden than it does on the old ODA/GNI ratio. Which is unfair, I think -- the Swedes sacrifice more of their wealth for ODA than the Americans and should be given credit for this sacrifice. That they have a more sensible social model too hardly seems something we should punish them for in international comparisons. Ultimately I would say that once you take into account the possibility of differing levels of taxes between states ODA/GNI remains the most meaningful metric for international comparisons. Thanks again for an interesting post. Terence

Thanks Matt for this summary of regional shares. I think perhaps the chart title should be changed to say "Total Australian country-allocated ODA by region" as of course this chart does not include the 20% of the budget going to multilaterals. While the Government likes to say that the majority of poor people live in the Asia-Pacific, 75% of the extremely poor people in the world live in Africa and South Asia. Given this, multilateral funding is generally much more focused on Africa and South Asia and thus lifts Australia's contributions to these poorer areas. Perhaps future summaries of the regional distribution of aid could include a summary of both country-allocated aid and total Australian aid.

Thanks for the comment, Garth. It does seem that aid effectiveness receives more attention from MPs than other areas but I don't believe that is a bad thing at all. Indeed, improvements to aid effectiveness are likely to provide a strong argument for government to follow through with the projected increases in the share of ODA out of total government outlays. On your question, you are right in that downward revisions to revenue are also a significant risk but I guess in my comment above I was focusing on the government's "most difficult task", which in my view relates to controlling total expenditure. The revenue projections are underpinned by still very high terms of trade, at least by historical levels, and a recovery in GDP growth. Company tax and MRRT revenue might bounce around a bit but on the whole the revenue story is more compelling than the expenditure side. The government has clearly worked very hard on controlling spending yet in the face of a budget blowout no net expenditure savings could be found. It wouldn't take much for a blowout in other spending areas to impact on the aid budget in future years. Of course all of this depends on who is in government so we will just have to wait and see how much support the aid budget receives post September.

Hi Fiona, Thanks for commenting. I would say it could be challenging to get the cooperation of some of these less legitimate operations to research some of those topics, since they probably wouldn't want to expose themselves to criticism. However, someone based in Cambodia may have more of an insight. There is a growing volume of research material on these issues. It might be worth contacting child rights NGOs operating in Cambodia (Plan, World Vision, Save the Children, UNICEF, etc) as they may be able to provide more information and insight, as well as data from any studies that they have done. Thanks, Ashlee

Hi Scott, Thanks for your comment. While we disagree on some things, I agree when you say: "Long lived solutions to the issue of national energy challenges requires a combination of meeting such as the PES and the ongoing efforts to improve financing and support national plans and systems and the major key for national leadership remains capacity. Energy projects of a few years and no ongoing support are doomed to eventually fail. Infrastructure needs 10+ year commitments on national institutions, capacity building, budgets and development coordination." If you're looking for an example of mismatched incentives in energy work I have one for you. Politicians elected for 3 or 4 year terms, who might spend at most 2 terms accountable for the aid work they direct, picking projects which will only become obvious white elephants in a decade's time at the earliest. What incentives do they have for caring about long term commitments and institution building? Next to none I would say. On the other hand, bold announcements and opening ceremonies serve them well. Of course some politicians' motives are altruistic enough that the story linking meetings to consequences transcends incentives somewhat, but at the end of the day, as you note, incentives matter. I agree with you that aid programme staff and multilats do good work on energy, but part of their empowerment vis a vis the political sphere is process, which is why I get anxious when I read politicians pronouncing it as the enemy. cheers Terence

Thank you to the contributors for their article. It has been a busy last few months for the Pacific energy family. This meeting in Auckland was not alone in discussing regional and national energy challenges for Pacific Island Countries. There was a Pacific Leaders Energy Summit in Tonga the week prior to the Auckland PES and there was a Asia and Pacific Energy Forum led by UNESCAP in mid-March and a SIDS DOCK meeting in the first week of May in Nadi, Fiji. These meetings have outcome statements that are more strongly based in a wider range of energy development options and better linked to the UN SG Sustainable Energy for All initiative. Rather than speed dating it has been a series of ongoing engagements. So there has been ample time to consider and think about energy issues plus if you were really motivated there was also the Post-2015 discussions as well. While there is a lot of overlap with the various meetings it also highlights the importance of energy as a key enabler of economic and social development, so it is important to get the policy and the process right as there has already been hundreds of millions allocated for this vital piece of economic infrastructure in the Pacific. While progress is difficult there are some successful examples in the region. The country focus discussion on the relevance of the ambitious renewable energy targets is only part of the problem. The missing aspect are the incentives provided by donors and development partners that should be better understood and assessed. The meeting in Tonga focused on the importance of national coordinated plans, some PICs have these, less known is why so few donors are willing to accept national plans or even support national led implementation. Long lived solutions to the issue of national energy challenges requires a combination of meeting such as the PES and the ongoing efforts to improve financing and support national plans and systems and the major key for national leadership remains capacity. Energy projects of a few years and no ongoing support are doomed to eventually fail. Infrastructure needs 10+ year commitments on national institutions, capacity building, budgets and development coordination. To be fair to the meeting in Auckland, I would dispute that it is a case of speed dating, if you look and review the plans of some of the development partners, such as the ADB, who makes a substantial portion of the promised funding, this is a reflection of long engagement process that was not developed overnight. Yes, political imperatives require rapid responses while good public servants seek to develop sound processes but it is a creative tension that can work to the advantage of both.

Hi Ashlee, I am a Master’s student at Lund University studying International Development and Management. I'm toying with some ideas for my thesis and was hoping you (or anyone else) could help give some input on the feasibility or carrying out the research in Cambodia. Ideas: (1) Perceptions of voluntourists from children at orphanages, (2) How orphan tourism hinders the protection of children, or (3) The prevalence and expansion of orphanages in a given area (using GIS mapping). Thanks so much for a great post and any assistance or advice you may have!

Thanks colleagues for your informative news regarding the prospects and challenges in monitoring and evaluating governmnets programes supposed to transform us.My comment relates to the "baraza philosophy" introduced by the OPM. While it sounds a good idea that would promote accountability between right holders and duty bearers, in some districts especially in northern Uganda, its not functioning and seemed to have been abolished and the reason is attributed to the way it was conceptualised. The elements of ownership and participatory processes were an oversight on the part of the promoters (OPM) and Offices of the Resident District Commissioners. The right holders (citizens) often confronted and embarrassed duty bearers during these barazas thus losing the objectives. My suggestion would have been to first educate the duty bearers and rights holders on the whole concept and seek for their input before operationalising the same. Otherwise it would have been the best and effective way of promoting accountability between rights holders and duty bearers including empowering our local people in demanding for their rights as opposed to viewing service delivery as charity from Government. I thank you once again for this forum.

Thanks for this background Anthony. I wish Figure 4 was on one axis and aid was really climbing ahead of defence expenditure! That might justify the especially strong focus on cost effectiveness that aid seems to receive from MPs in comparison with other areas of government expenditure. At just 1.4% of total budget expenditure even if one could double aid's cost effectiveness this won't make much difference to the effectiveness of government overall. Why do you say: Failure of the government to control overall spending represents a significant risk to the aid budget in terms of further delays to achieving the 0.5% target or removal of the target completely? Why do you not also talk about the level of revenue in this regard?

An interesting article, but a few words of caution might be useful: ICAI is far from a proven public good - their reviews are often patchy and ill informed, (see comments <a href="http://www.simonmaxwell.eu/blog/reflections-on-icais-first-year.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>) whilst draining huge amounts of time from the country teams they descend on. The Queen's speech last week failed to confirm the commitment to 0.7% - and this highly visible growth in the budget has earned DFID some very powerful and vociferous enemies in the Tory camp, and in the press. this might all come back to bite them in the form of a re-merger with the FCO or a cut in budget (the burgeoning xenophobic UKIP party, currently stealing many Tory votes, wants to switch it off completely). The increase in budget might have been more managable and useful if it had been accompanied by a streamlining of management burden and greater use of sector budget support or EU-style MDG Contracts. instead it has been accompanied by a retreat to 1980s style project micro-management, a neurotic approach to corruption, and a growing mismatch between budget, management capacity and principles of aid-effectiveness. On this latter point, DFID has gone from leading the field in demonstrating good practice, to having effectively dropped harmonisation and alignment like a hot potato. If one looks at their quality assurance guidance for Business Case design, whilst it is very strong on fiduciary risk, vfm, etc it is silent on any of the good-donorship principles of Rome, Paris, Accra or Busan. This means that all the DFID funds programmed in the last 2 years will have been done with no consideration of these hard-won principles of effective aid, but will instead be strong on narrow, projectised and attributable short-term results. That may be "aid", but it is not "development". And I won't even start on Mr Cameron's efforts to remove a commitment to inequality in the post 2015 agenda... So yes, lots to learn from UKAid, but not always lessons to emulate!

As far as noticable in the press, Indonesia in not under threat from any other country. They spend so much on armaments that it would lead some to question how they qualify for more aid; when cutting their budget for armaments would probably be of more benefit. Is Australia keeping on the right side of the big kid by handing over a few lollies.

In 2012, according to OECD DAC data (converted at today's exchange rate), the entire New Zealand aid spend was AU$467M. Less than your annual increase. So you'll have to forgive a Kiwi at least a little bit of trans-Tasman aid envy...