Some important issues are just too slippery, too remote or too big to wrap your head around. Foreign aid is one of them.
The fact that a big slice of Australia’s $4.3 billion (yes, billion) foreign aid budget is pocketed by a handful of largely invisible companies should ring alarm bells within government.
The fact that one of the biggest of those companies files no public accounts with Australian regulators and was, until recently, domiciled in an international tax haven should ring more alarm bells.
Very few people question Australia’s responsibility to provide aid to under-developed and developing countries. But the importance of that responsibility, and the size of the aid budget, means accountability, transparency and probity must be overriding — and clearly that is far from happening, as highlighted by this week’s joint investigation by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and Crikey.
We kicked off our series yesterday with this line:
The central question at the heart of this web of complex company structuring is this: such set-ups for tax minimisation purposes are common in international company business – but is it acceptable for major recipients of Australian government contracts to operate in this way?
As Bernard Keane wrote yesterday, under the government’s commitment to increase foreign aid to 0.5% of Gross National Income, the current figure of $4.3 billion is scheduled to rise to $8-9 billion in five years’ time.
Now’s the time to read the fine print on Australian’s foreign aid billions.
It certainly sounds suspicious. I’ve been under the impression for quite some time that most of the money allocated for foreign aid goes straight into the pockets of very well paid Westerners who are ‘development consultants’ etc, who, of course, need to be remunerated well first for the very risk of going into dangerous developing countries full of exotic diseases and civil wars plus then providing their amazing development expertise. Of course, these salary dollars are spent on lavish houses and private schools for their kids in Western countries where they live most of the time, not given away to the poor starving teeming millions of the world — after all, we’re only here to teach them to fish, not give them the fish.
Interesting also, when discussing foreign aid the government’s goals are expressed as a percentage of Gross National Income. 0.5 % of GNI sounds so much more than 0.08% (or whatever) of GDP.
If, as a nation, we decided that refugee issues and poverty are important, we would aim much higher.
This confirms what all the mug punters have always suspected…that something is not just rotten in the state of Denmark, but Denmark is now every point of the compass.
@JOHN BENNETS
I guess there is always the trickle down factor..ie..that some of that aid money would find itself to those who need it the most, but as you infer, that’s not the motive for the aid in the first place.
It’s just seems that there are some who have made it an art-form in fleecing public money under the pretext of doing good..”Foreign Aid” and too many other issues to mention.