Australia must promote its generous aid program, warts and all

The time has come for the Australian Government to actively promote in the community its generous aid program in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific.

You would almost think we have something to hide given the low profile our aid program, and other support such as Covid-19 vaccines, are given by the federal government.

Now is the time to not just review the program, and realign it to changed circumstances, but it is also time to educate the taxpayers and the wider community on its generosity, and its goals.

We are by far the most generous aid donors to the immediate region. In the current financial year direct development assistance (aid) to PNG and the South Pacific totals around $1 billion, with around $600 million going to Papua New Guinea.

Our main "rival" in the region is unquestionably the Peoples Republic of China. It is difficult to accurately assess the exact level of real "aid" (as opposed to loans) China gives, but it has been estimated at being less than $150 million.

I wrote recently about how the priorities in regard to our aid to PNG need to be revised urgently. Health services, including the response to the Covid-19 epidemic in PNG, must be allocated a maximum amount of our aid, including a greater allocation of skilled personnel who can be stationed in the nation's major hospitals.

In this article I want to take my belief in the need for our aid programs to be given a higher profile in the community a step further. We have nothing to be ashamed of, indeed we can be proud of the generous, untied assistance we give PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu etc each and every year.

My main criticism of the existing aid program, especially in PNG, is that it is allocated through a "scatter gun" approach – dozens of small projects, which result in limited effective impact in the areas of real and growing need, such as health care and basic quality of life needs.

What we need is a more "big picture" policy approach – targeting one or two areas each year, and devoting maximum resources, especially skilled personnel, to them. Not only will the impact be greater, but its effectiveness can be better and transparently evaluated.

A big picture policy approach will also fit in with another suggestion I advanced some weeks ago – shifting the nerve-centre of our aid delivery structure from Canberra to Cairns, and North Queensland as a whole.

Cairns has seen its hospital facilities stretched as a result of Covid-19 cases from Papua New Guinea. The number is strictly controlled by the Australian Government but it still means the resources of the Cairns General Hospital are under pressure.

It needs to be remembered that Cairns is closer to Port Moresby by air than it is to Brisbane. The distances between the Solomon's capital, Honiara, and Cairns makes it about the same distance as Cairns is from Brisbane.

There can be no question that the Cairns, and Far North Queensland economies, are in dire straits. For as long as international travel is off the agenda that position won't improve much, if at all.

Relocating the "nerve centre" of our aid delivery programs with the South Pacific to Cairns would provide an immediate boost to the local economy

If the federal government got pro-active and encouraged the Australian, and international, "aid delivery" companies to open offices in Cairns there would be an added local benefit.

What most Australians don't appreciate about our overseas aid is that many of the programs are "delivered and managed" by private sector companies in Australia – principally out of Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, and maybe Brisbane.

This structure results in the "boomerang aid" level being just too high overall. Boomerang aid is defined as aid allocated to a foreign country but which is actually spent in Australia by one or more of the specialised "aid delivery" companies. Depending on the nature of the project it can be as high as 50 per cent – and that is just not defensible.

At least if the "aid packages" were delivered out of Cairns there could be greater transparency as well as local benefits.

Papua New Guinea has a Consulate in Cairns, and Australia could look at helping to fund Consulates for The Solomon Islands and Vanuatu or Fiji. That would enable the recipient countries to work even more closely with the Federal Government's development assistance office, and the private sector agencies delivering the aid.

But the most important benefit of all is that by locating a small but important Commonwealth office in a regional centre that is actually relatively close to the countries benefiting from the development assistance we generously give.

And it would be sending the "right signal" to our regional neighbours at a time when they remain under unrelenting pressure from the Peoples Republic of China.

It would get the key agency formulating development assistance programs out of the Canberra bureaucracy and when travel to the region resumes it would enable officials to more readily visit our regional neighbours to engage with government officials, and inspect the actual implementation progress of individual projects.

There is also a substantial workforce in and around Cairns that can be employed on Australian projects in the region. Fly-in fly-out arrangements already operate for mine workers on major PNG mining sites, such as Ok Tedi.

The Canberra bureaucracy, and the aid delivery companies who have a cosy relationship with the bureaucracy, will resist such a radical change.

But the time has come for a serious review of the concentration of our development assistance policy and administration structures in Canberra.

A shift to Cairns won't just benefit a struggling economy – it will send a positive signal to our regional neighbours who today need our genuine support and assistance more than ever!