Gillard's spin on flood levy sucking her into the vortex

Remember it was not long ago that Nationals Senate Leader, Barnaby Joyce, was slapped down by Labor, media commentators , and his own coalition leader, Tony Abbott, for suggesting that the Opposition consider trimming back foreign aid to help tackle the budget deficit. Joyce had singled out $50 million that Australia had given the World Bank for a food program.

But AusAid is, in fact, currently the subject of an efficiency review which was set up in November and which will report to the Government in April with written submissions from interested parties due by Tuesday ( Feb 2).

In a nutshell the inquiry has been asked to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the Australian aid program and to make recommendations on how to improve its structure and delivery.

Bearing in mind that the last independent public review of Australia’s aid program was conducted in 1996 five months seems an unreasonably tight schedule in which to examine an organisation which will have a annual budget of more than $8.6 billion in a few years.

And coinciding with Australia’s worst natural disaster it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the scope of the review should be broadened to take such domestic financial crises into account. But, at the end of the day, the responsibility for this rests squarely with our political leaders.

In the meantime the biggest political challenge for Gillard, should she manage to get the numbers in Parliament for her levy, is to convince the electorate that this is a one-off measure . This won’t be easy considering that our political past is littered with broken taxation promises.

Of course she could have avoided a lot of the pain and risk associated with this by introducing a natural disaster fund - an initiative which would have almost certainly won across the board support. But she could not have claimed it as her idea. And that, it seems, is what this is all about.