In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, Debra Jopson reports:
MORE than $600 million of Australia’s foreign aid over the past two years never went overseas but was swallowed up in the coffers of a small Federal Government agency in Pitt Street, Sydney…
New analysis by a Sydney-based watchdog contends that a third of the $3 billion being spent on foreign development assistance this year is really phantom aid which either never leaves our shores or has been directed away from poverty alleviation programs overseas.
Almost $1 billion which the Government has identified as official aid is being spent on programs in which no new money flows to the countries said to be getting it, Aidwatch says in a report to be released today.
Jopson gives several examples of “foreign aid” that never left Australia including payments to support the “Pacific solution”, payment of a legal bill at the AWB inquiry and $644 million of “development assistance to Iraq” which was actually used to cover a 17-year-old Iraqi debt.
The Aidwatch report, Fighting Poverty or Fantasy Figures? The Reality of Australian aid is already available on-line, in PDF format. There’s plenty of detail there on how Australian “Overseas Development Aid” (ODA) is coming straight back to Australia, in some cases, or never leaving the country in others. This section on assistance to refugees exposes just how cynical the entire exercise is:
In the current financial year the Australian government estimates it will spend $155 million of the aid program through the Department of Immigration for humanitarian work and assistance to refugees.
“Assistance to refugees� in an Australian context includes funding the mandatory detention of asylum seekers in detention centres in Australia and offshore in Nauru and Christmas Island. The funds Australia spends to repatriate asylum seekers back to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq is also counted as ODA. This area of funding received much media coverage in recent years when the enticement of $3000 was offered to asylum seekers in detention if they ‘volunteered’ to return home. The figures below, released by AusAID in May 2006, show the estimated levels of Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) funding that are counted as ODA.
Table 4 DIMA ODA spending 06/07 estimate.
Allocation $millions Support to refugees first 12 months in Australia 112.8 Offshore management of unauthorised arrivals 21.0 Governance Capacity Building 5.8 DIMA for PNG & Pacific & East Timor 3.1 DIMA for Indonesia 2.3 DIMA for Iraq and Afghanistan 6.0 DIMA – Other 4.0 Total 155.0 Source: Answers to questions taken on notice at Senate Estimates Hearings, May 2006
And the Government’s position on this little rort they’re running?
AusAID said all funds counted as official assistance fell within OECD guidelines.
A spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, said he stood by AusAID’s answer. (SMH)
i feel we will be seeing more stories on the incompetence of the howard government as people start to believe that howard will be voted out and begin to speak out
This should not be a surprise to the body politic when one considers the general ethos of the Federal Government — it does not seem very keen on a “meals on wheels” policy of authentic charity and assistance for genuinely needy and struggling nations. It is easy of course to say how wonderful the Government was in its assistance for Tsunami victims. However those “emergency” measures are no less than what is expected of wealthy nations in tackling humanitarian crises.
If we think of Midnight Oil’s “the rich get richer the poor get the picture”, that song seems to apply to the current Government.
The nation needs a gigantic wake-up call in its collective conscience. This appalling “aid” episode indeed points to yet another urgent and important reason why “governmental change” must happen this year.
Another way to lie with statistics is to churn the unemployed through bogus schemes run by shoddy and dodgy ‘employment’ agencies.
This Howard regime is obviously run by fascist liars and it has a lot of vile collaborators. All of Howards willing executioners need reining in hard imho.
This was the bit that I loved from the SMH report…..
“- A $27,758 payment AusAID made to the Australian law firm Sparke Helmore for legal assistance during the Cole inquiry into legal breaches of the UN oil-for-food program has been counted as foreign aid.”
“It was a cost incurred in the administration of aid program assistance to Iraq,” said a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/05/27/1180205079584.html?page=2
Talk about creative, compassionate accounting. Those poor bugger legle eagles really need help, while defending the indefensible. Have you seen how expensive it is to send your kids to Public School these days?
Apparently, Ratty’s Potemkin Villages are in a state of general collapse.
thanks Joe2 – its good to know that the on-costs of propping up Saddam Hussein are fully factored in to our generous overseas assistance packages.
Singing!
“feeeeeeed the world,
let them know its Xmas time
etc”
Jaybs. They really are a bunch of crooks, arent they.
Straight up crims.
Scares the bejeesus out of me.
If we can’t vote these bastards out this time what hope do we have?
What in hell would it have to take to get rid of them?
for a few years Kerry Packer’s companies were one of Australia’s biggest aid recipients… there has been some untying of Australian aid in recent years – mostly after years of hassling by orgs. like Aid Watch and NGO’s/churches etc…. (“tied” aid means that it has to be spent with Australian companies….aka “boomerang aid”.
but these companies at least had contracts for work in PNG or Fji or whereever….. but AWB Legal bills?