Additional comments by the Australian Greens
Background
1.1
This inquiry, into the delivery and effectiveness of Australia's
bilateral aid program in Papua New Guinea, takes place within a context of an
Australian overseas aid budget that has suffered over $11 billion in Coalition
government cuts to aid funding commitments since 2013. This followed the
previous Labor government's cuts to planned aid investment of $5.8 billion.[1]
1.2
Australia's 2000 commitment to achieving the Millennium Development
Goals of 0.7 per cent gross national income (GNI) by 2015 has been abandoned by
both Labor and Coalition governments. In 2011, both Labor and the Coalition
asserted a commitment to increasing Australia's aid budget to 0.5 per cent of
GNI by 2015. However, Australia's aid budget has continued to decline to just
0.27 per cent GNI in 2015.
1.3
The presentation of this year's 2016-17 Budget confirms a further
deterioration in Australian overseas aid commitments by another $224 million.
Our commitment to the world's poorest people now sits at $3.8 billion and a new
historic low of 0.22 per cent of GNI. This is the lowest in Australia's aid
commitment on record[2]
and is an indictment of the Coalition's attitude towards the world's poorest
and most vulnerable people.
1.4
The Australian Greens thank the organisations and individuals who made
submissions, and acknowledge and thank Committee Senators and the Committee
Secretariat for their work on this inquiry.
Australian aid to Papua New Guinea
1.5
Australia's aid to Papua New Guinea represents a large proportion of the
total aid the country receives and as such is vitally important. However as
noted by the OECD Development Co-operative Directorate, there has been a
real-value decline in Australia's ODA investment in PNG of some 29 per cent since
2009.
1.6
While PNG's gross domestic product has grown at a healthy rate, driven
largely by its energy and mineral exports, PNG struggles to provide basic
healthcare and education to its people, 40 per cent of whom live in poverty.
PNG's ranking in the UN Human Development Index has continued to decrease since
1994, with the country placed among the lowest in the index.
1.7
The Australia Greens are greatly concerned that so many Papua New
Guineans continue to suffer the terrible effects of poverty, with the worst
maternal and child health indicators in the Pacific and indeed the world.
1.8
Health services are out of reach of many villages, and around half of
PNG's children in rural areas suffer from malnutrition and die from preventable
diseases. Vaccination rates have fallen from 57 per cent in 2008 to 46 per cent
in 2012. Tuberculosis, including multi drug resistant TB, is increasing with a
42 per cent rise in new TB cases. Leprosy is endemic in coastal regions. Around
75 per cent of pregnant women living with HIV do not receive treatment to
prevent mother-to-child transmission, and too many women and girls die in
pregnancy and childbirth.
1.9
Basic sanitation and access to clean water is lacking. Literacy levels
and access to education is very low, with most adults having four years formal
schooling and less than 7 per cent of PNG women having attended secondary
school.
1.10
Gender equality is among the lowest in the world, and most women and
girls suffer sexual and family violence with a large proportion of all children
suffering physical abuse.
1.11
It is clear the targeting of Australia's aid has a long way to go, with
the decline in health, education and basic services, and a lack of opportunity
at the local level for so many Papua New Guineans constituting a tragedy on Australia's
doorstep. This concern is illustrated in the Gizra Tribe's description of the
lack of any assistance benefiting their communities.
1.12
The continuing disintegration of PNG's basic health and wellbeing
indicators is happening within the Australian Coalition government's Aid for
Trade framework, with its refocusing of aid funding towards macro-economic and
trade development as a priority at the expense of local community capacity
building, development and wellbeing, particularly in PNG's remote and isolated
areas.
1.13
In this context, the Australian Greens reiterate the OECD's concern
about the lack of transparency about where Australia's 2015-16 PNG ODA budget
of $477 million has been actually spent. With this in mind it is worth
comparing Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection
expenditure in PNG of $513 million in 2015.
1.14
The Australian Greens also question how much of Australia's ODA funding
has been diverted by both Labor and Coalition governments to their illegal
Manus Island refugee detention centre in PNG, and other aspects of the
Australian government's asylum seeker policy. Australia has wilfully ignored
corrupt governance in Papua New Guinea in exchange for their cooperation on an
offshore detention regime which has been found to be illegal and
unconstitutional by the PNG Supreme Court.
1.15
We also note this Coalition government's diversion of $1 billion of aid
funding into climate change funding. Climate change funding is sorely needed
but the Australian Greens do not believe that pick-pocketing the aid budget is
an reasonable way to secure that funding. The diversion came at a time when
communities in PNG have been facing prolonged drought with food and water
shortages, with more than 700,000 people estimated to be affected by severe lack
of food production.[3]
1.16
With both PNG's own national economic growth and Australia's aid largely
bypassing most of PNG's poor, the Australian Greens believe that the
effectiveness of Australia's aid funding priorities requires urgent realignment
with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), prioritising the health and
education needs of those Papua New Guineans isolated from any such access.
The Australian Greens approach to aid
1.17
The Australian Greens believe that as a wealthy nation Australia's
record on aid investment is shameful.
1.18
The dropping of our abysmal contribution of 0.31 per cent GNI in 2015-16
to the new low of 0.22 per cent GNI in 2016-17 is an unfortunate reflection of
Australia's sullied reputation as a global citizen committed to the alleviation
of poverty.
1.19
Whilst the Australian Greens fully support the recommendation to achieve
an ODA/GNI target of 0.5 per cent by 2024-25, we additionally call for an extra
commitment to increase Australian aid investment to reach 0.7 per cent GNI over
the coming decade. We note the UK's current ODA contribution of nearly 0.7 per
cent last year.
1.20
The Australian Greens strongly believe all aid-funded programs should be
consistent with a human-rights based approach to development. PNG should be
benefitting from an Australian aid framework that is economically and
environmentally sustainable; and that builds local capacity and promotes local
community participation and gender equality. However this cannot be done
without first prioritising and meeting the need for access to basic health,
nutrition, sanitation and education provision across PNG, and especially to its
isolated people.
1.21
From an economic viewpoint, Australia's aid should be facilitating
positive and equitable changes to PNG's social, economic and environmental
standards. It should be empowering communities to build simple economic
self-reliance at the local village level and enhancing the political, economic
and social/cultural rights of communities, especially those affected by our
aid-funded projects.
1.22
Local communities affected by proposed developments such as mining
should be empowered with decision-making abilities by free, prior and informed
consent, and with transparent mechanisms ensuring a right to accountability.
This is not happening in Papua New Guinea, and the Australian government would
do well to withdraw its support from the suffering that has been caused by
multinational corporate mining interests in PNG.
1.23
The Australian Greens do not support Australia's Mining for Development
Initiative for its destructive aims that are antithesis to the Sustainable
Development Goals. It should be withdrawn from any pretence of aid funding.
1.24
Mining projects have long been associated with what is referred to as
the 'resource curse': the dispossession of Indigenous peoples and other
communities from their land; irreversible environmental destruction; increasing
economic and social inequality; government corruption; corporate rent-seeking
and violent conflicts.
1.25
Australian governments should not be subsidising or favouring Australian
business interests in PNG via the aid budget. Nor should our aid funding be
used to facilitate Australian businesses' claims to PNG's natural resources
with their exporting of profits from PNG. Australia's aid funding should never
result in the displacement or disempowerment of local communities and workers,
or in the continuing environmental degradation such as that caused by
multinational mining interests in PNG.
1.26
Australia's interference with an eye to benefitting Australian interests
in the extraction of PNG's resources and development of international trade
echoes our historical colonial attitudes toward PNG. This is exemplified in
Australian mining interests and most recently in Bougainville where preparation
to reopen of Rio Tinto's Panguna copper mine is occurring within a context of
Bougainville's upcoming independence referendum process.
1.27
Here the Australian Greens strongly condemn Australia's funding of
consultants in the constructing of the Bougainville Mining Act 2015 that
repeats the processes that helped ignite Bougainville's long and destructive
civil war. With Australian-funded help, the Act alienates and disempowers local
landowners and criminalises opposition to large-scale development of their
land. It facilitates the further destruction of rivers and land in a community
where subsistence farming is vital to survival, and ensures any multinational
mine can trump the wants and needs of the local landowners while destroying
their environment without redress.
1.28
Australia's aid funding, and indeed any Australian funding, should never
be used to support any such processes. Australia's commitments to aid funding
should be stable and predictable, and the value of that funding should not fall
over time. Those organisations delivering aid-funded projects cannot be
expected to achieve strategic and sustainable long-term goals that are 'value
for money' without funding certainty.
1.29
The Australian Greens agree that Australia can afford to give more and
that it is clearly in Australia's own interest 'to give more to the least
developed countries in our region', particularly to our closest neighbour PNG.
We are mindful of Australia's role in PNG's recent history, and believe
Australia has unmet responsibilities to redress outstanding issues where
Australia's involvement has and continues to be to the detriment of the very
Papua New Guineans who suffer.
Recommendations
Recommendation 1
1.30
That Australia progressively increases its aid funding to reach a target
of 0.7 per cent GNI by 2024-25.
Recommendation 2
1.31
That Australia's aid program realigns itself to the Sustainable
Development Goals as its priority framework.
Recommendation 3
1.32
That the Australian government increases its aid funding to Papua New
Guinea, prioritising access to health, education and basic services.
Recommendation 4
1.33
That Australia's funded aid projects in PNG are informed by advice from
experienced and respected NGO aid organisations, but largely driven by local
communities.
Recommendation 5
1.34
That the Australian government makes transparent the details of where it
is spending its aid funding in PNG, the intended outcomes, and measured
progress against those outcomes.
Senator Lee
Rhiannon
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