Most Australians want overseas aid to target poverty alleviation and sustainable development, but a majority of the politicians favour pursuing the country’s national and commercial interests through the aid programme.

This dichotomy was revealed in a report launched by AID/WATCH, an independent monitor of aid, trade and debt in the region, at the News South Wales state Parliament House April 5. Community members who responded to the AID/Watch survey want the aid allocated to meet the country’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) commitment. In September 2000, UN members had agreed to work towards eliminating global poverty and hunger, to improve health, gender equality, education, and environmental sustainability and to create a global partnership for development. These goals indicate that developed countries need to give around 0.5 per cent of their Gross National Income (GNI) to overseas aid by 2010, and 0.7 per cent by 2015. The Australian government’s announcement of an increase in aid to $3.2 billion a year by 2010 will increase it’s development aid to only around 0.36 per cent in 2010.

In 2006-2007 Australia’s annual allocation of official development assistance is $2.3 or 0.3 per cent of GNI, which places Australia 19th on the list of 22 OECD countries. According to a 2005 poll commissioned by the country’s International Development Agency, AusAID, 91 per cent of Australians support overseas aid.

AID/Watch has been raising concerns about the manner in which the Australian Government delivers aid, believing that it has diverged significantly from the traditional humanitarian purpose that many people associate with aid, focusing mainly on the conditions for economic growth.

Eighty per cent of Australian aid contracts continue to be allocated to Australian private companies, where profits boomerang back to Australia rather than remain in the aid recipient country. Recent evidence of Australian Wheat Board (AWB) executives receiving AusAID contracts to further the Australian wheat trade in Iraq is seen as just the tip of the iceberg.

The second concern the report raises is the focus on Australia’s national and regional security in relation to Pacific Island nations. So called ‘governance’ progra-mmes in recent years form as much as 36 per cent of Australian aid allocation and comprise major law and order interventions such as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solo-mon Islands and the Enhanced Cooperation Package to Papua New Guinea; and in the finance and justice sectors in the name of ‘strengthening institutions’.

Sarah Maddison, author of recently released book, “Silencing Dissent”, says, “This report represents the distance that exists between public perceptions of aid and the competing ‘interests’ that can be seen to do-minate political thinking.”

That the parliamentarians are out of step with broader community attitudes to aid is reflected in the AID/WATCH survey. Seventy one per cent of parliamentarians agree with having ‘the national interest’ in the broader aid objective. Kate Wheen, Co-director AID/WATCH, says, “This is a disappointing statistic. This research nails the fundamental problem with Australian aid, that it has no clear focus and is prone to respond to short-term strategic and commercial interests.” — IPS