In the just-released ASPI publication Agenda for change: strategic choices for the next government, ASPI Executive Director Peter Jennings argues that DFAT’s budget should be expanded by $100 million at the expense of AusAID. Remarkably, Jennings gives no reason why AusAID should foot the bill for the expansion in funding he recommends be directed to DFAT. Instead, the argument proceeds by fiat.
Last year, I wrote on common arguments against aid to Asia, and the fallacies in them. Here is my take on the sort of argument Jennings is making, and which Greg Sheridan has made before him:
A second argument is that we should spend aid funds on things that would more directly advance our national interest. Hugh White has called for aid to Indonesia to be used for language training in Indonesian for Australians. Greg Sheridan of The Australian has argued that we should use aid funds to pay for more diplomats. These are lazy arguments. Perhaps language training and diplomat hiring are good uses of tax revenue, but why pick on aid to fund them? Why not defence? Or welfare payments? Or industry support? Based on the arguments I provided in the previous two posts, aid is one of the most productive forms of government spending around. Increase it, and argue the case for more spending on other items at the expense of something else.
If the ASPI argument is lazy, the DLP advertising campaign arguing that we should cut aid to Indonesia because Indonesia has a military is crazy. Here’s my take on that line of argument from the same blog post of last year:
Another common argument against aid begins by noting that countries in Asia can afford to, and indeed do, spend on X, where X might be their own overseas aid program, or defence or education. Therefore, the argument continues, why should we help them by giving aid? This argument has political salience, but is spurious. Of course governments spend money on a range of activities, some better, some worse. But this says nothing about whether we should provide them with aid.
Interestingly, the DLP is not opposed to aid per se. To the contrary, it wants Australia to be one of the world’s top 10 donors. Its opposition to aid to Indonesia would seem to stem from its support for West Papua (and also Timor-Leste—the leader of the DLP visited earlier this year on a private fact-finding mission). Though the DLP also says that “We must work more closely with our regional neighbours, particularly Indonesia,” on asylum seeker issues. Cutting aid to Indonesia would be an odd way to go about achieving that goal.
Stephen, thanks for the post and for drawing attention to this odd paper by ASPI. I read the paper and I’m afraid it just gets more mystifying. See this perplexing passage from Peter Jennings’s chapter:
“A government that wants to promote a mature and broad foreign policy would divert about $100 million a year from AusAID to DFAT (less than the cost of a wing on a new Super Hornet, 12 of which were bought on a whim for around $2.9 billion in the 2013 Budget).”
So a poor decision by Defence is a reason for cutting AusAID? How can that be? Should AusAID be cut every time some other part of government makes a mistake? Is this what passes for ‘strategic’ commentary in Australia?
Thanks Stephen, great post.
The DLP ads are quite baffling. As you said, the DLP support aid. But they’ve created an ad that clearly taps into the kind of sentiments that you hear from those advocating for aid cuts. Is the ad a work of political strategy (i.e. are they trying to have their cake and eat it too by having a pro-aid policy while trying to pick up anti-aid votes through the ad)? Or is it just a really confusing piece of communications (i.e. they don’t realise it has strong potential to fuel the crusade of those calling for aid cuts, including to countries they support such as Timor-Leste)? It’s bizarre.
To make it even stranger, there is also another cut of the same ad that promotes an eyewear store. The ads were bankrolled by Ian Melrose, who has been a long-time Timor-Leste and West Papua independence supporter.
The ads seem counterproductive to the DLP’s goals in many ways. Not least that cutting aid to Indonesia would affect Indonesian people living in poverty–including those in Papua and Papua Barat provinces–a lot more than it would impact on the Indonesian government.