Want to know how Australia’s $4.836 billion in Australian overseas aid will be spent in 2011-12? Finding out is not easy of you are a journalist or documentary filmmaker and do not want to rely only on Department of Foreign Affairs press releases and what is to be found on the DFAT and AusAID websites.
“I am committed to enhancing the transparency of our aid program,” writes Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd on the DFAT website. “When people are able to access information, they are better able to hold those who are managing their money — whether AusAID, partner governments, or international organisations — to account.”
Noble sentiments - but how does Rudd’s professed commitment to transparency and accountability stack up when it comes to providing media access to the aid programs on which this money is being spent?
As the latest African disaster numbs us with a tsunami of death over the coming months, attention should be paid to the efficacy of Australian aid to Africa and elsewhere in both the short-term and long term.
It is not good enough to presume that all aid is good, that throwing money at third world problems is always helpful; that there is no need for the effectiveness of Australian aid to be questioned, on behalf of the public, by the media.
In his Punch article on August 1 Mr Rudd acknowledges the cynicism felt by many Australians (“we’ve seen it all before. What’s different about this one? And why haven’t they fixed it up by now?”) but fails, it seems, to understand that a key reason for this cynicism is the general public being sick to death of the kind of spin that politicians seem to think we consumers of it are too stupid not to recognize for what it is.
Tugging at the heartstrings though it does, Rudd’s article, in what it leaves out, is light on substance, heavy on spin.
The reasons for the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Horn of Africa are complex (a complexity that Rudd’s piece does not acknowledge) but one thing is certain – the famine bears witness to the failure of international aid, billions of dollars down the track, to achieve its stated goals.
This failure must, if we are to learn from our mistakes, put a large question mark over how Australia’s $4.836 billion in Australian overseas aid will be spent in 2011-12. When Rudd writes “One of the core objectives of our aid program is to save lives,” the obvious question arises: “Is Australian aid saving lives?” Can we, should we, presume that the answer must be ‘yes’?
I hope so but, as a filmmaker and journalist, I want to see for myself.
There is no reason to doubt Mr Rudd’s sincerity when he writes, “we want to save as many lives, educate as many children and lift as many people out of poverty as we can with our aid investment.”
The humanitarian reasons are obvious, the national security reasons perhaps less so. “Two thirds of the world’s poor live in Australia’s region, of our twenty nearest neighbours, eighteen are developing countries,” writes Rudd in the DFAT website.
“Poverty breeds instability and extremism in our region and globally and creates conditions that lead to more refugees, as people flee from violence or hardship.” Then there’s the trade imperative. Australia exports around $90 billion in goods and services to the countries where Australian bilateral aid is delivered.
For humanitarian, national security and economic reasons $4 billion in overseas aid makes a lot of sense. It is also a significant amount of money (around $200 for every Australian per annum) and taxpayers have a right to know that their money is being well-spent - not just through Department of Foreign Affairs press releases but by allowing the media free access to AusAID funded programs.
For two years I have been trying, wearing my documentary filmmaker’s hat, to gain such access to AusAID programs in Cambodia. And I wanted to interview someone from AusAID in relation to the drowning deaths of two children in Cambodia last year in a project sponsored to the tune of $23 million by AusAID.
Did AusAID incompetence contribute to the death of these two children? This was one of many questions for which I sought answers.
Working as a one-man filmmaking band this would have entailed accompanying the relevant AusAID official for a day or two as s/he worked in the field and getting him/her to speak to camera for ten minutes. The impact on AusAID staff time and Australian Embassy resources would have been minimal. The answer was delivered in a curt one word: ‘no’. No reason was provided. My invitation to Mr Rudd to speak to camera, to answer questions, was ignored.
In my next letter to Mr Rudd I broadened my question: “Is there any Overseas Development Assistance program or initiative anywhere in the world that I would be able to document and include in (my documentary) as an example of how Australian aid money is spent?”
Receipt of this letter was not acknowledged by Rudd’s office. I wrote to the Prime Minister suggesting that she ask Rudd to respond to my question. Receipt of this letter was not acknowledged by the Prime Minister’s office. (For those Punchers have never had a reason to write to Ministers and Prime Ministers, this is standard operating procedure more often than not).
“Why has Mr Ricketson not been allowed to interview and film officials and AusAID program workers?” asked Senator Birmingham on my behalf at a Senate Estimates Committee.
DFAT’s response: “Mr Ricketson’s request to interview and film officials and program workers was not approved because of the breadth of his request and the impact it would have on staff time and embassy resources.”
It took two years and 25 letters to get that answer from DFAT - an answer that opens up the bigger question: Why shouldn’t the media have free access to any and all of the programs paid for with Australian taxpayers’ $4 billion?
One of the important roles of those of the media is to look closely at the delivery of services by public servants (from the Prime Minister down) and, when inefficiency, incompetence and fraud are identified, to inform the public.
Why, given the number of taxpayer dollars being spent on aid is it virtually impossible to get DFAT to provide access to the projects upon which this aid is being spent? Why shouldn’t we in the media be able to cover stories about AusAID programs devoted to the provision of clean water, improved sanitation, reducing infant mortality, alleviating poverty etc?
Over the past five years our tax dollars have, amongst other achievements, created places for 330,000 poor children to go to school in Indonesia and immunized 900,000 children in Papua New Guinea. In the next year close to 1000 Australian will work overseas as part of AusAID’s Australian Volunteers International initiative – contributing their various skills in developing countries.
Australians should be proud of the contribution these volunteers make to helping those less fortunate than ourselves, but we need to know also when Australian aid is being poured into a bottomless pit of third world incompetence and corruption and, at times, when aid does more harm than good.
The transparency and accountability that Rudd professes to be committed to will be best served if the media is allowed unfettered access to AusAID progams worldwide. Without such access, without the critical assessments that only the media can provide, public cynicism about how Australia’s $4,836 in Australian overseas aid is spent will grow and no amount of spin will suffice to quell it.
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