Australia must promote its generous aid program, warts and all

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!