Masking false assumptions in Australia's aid delivery

Let us use the scandal of these huge consultancy fees paid to those administering our aid program to demand better of our government’s contribution to aid and development which is, after all, for our mutual common good. And let’s do it in ways which we know are useful. The Millennium Development Goals prescribed what needed to be done in 2000, likewise the Paris declaration on development effectiveness in 2005; and the Accra accord on aid in 2008.

We need to make meaningful bridges between ourselves; see the connection between the way we live our lives here and the way life gets lived in many developing communities and underpin these relationships with Patrick Dodson’s enunciated values of mutual equality, respect and love, to ensure that the people most affected have a role in shaping their own solutions.

Simple.

And meanwhile let’s at least try and “do no harm”. That’s the least I can expect from an aid program. And actually I think we can do a whole lot better than that. But we have to start doing things differently. Development aid as it is currently dished up in many parts of Indigenous Australia and in many of our bilateral aid programs is not working and is making things worse.

We know what to do. Let’s have the courage and political will to do it. And the energy and insight of my fellow citizens to demand it.