Date:  20 July 2007

In a major speech to the Lowy Institute, Kevin Rudd has committed a future Labor government to raising our Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 0.5 per cent GNI and announced a series of major initiatives to underpin our development assistance strategy in Asia and the Pacific and thus secure our future.

Australian Labor will develop and implement a long-term Pacific Partnership for Development and Security with Pacific Islands Countries. This ambitious program targets poverty as the natural enemy of political stability and security, and seeks to make poverty history. The program will tackle a raft of issues: from strengthening primary education and primary healthcare to building basic economic infrastructure; from ensuring access to clean water to tackling the problem of urban male youth unemployment. Working through organizations such as Australian Business Volunteers and Australian financial institutions, the partnership will develop business skills and bolster the private economies of Pacific Islands Countries (PICs). The Pacific Partnership will maintain the emphasis on good governance with a new focus on training regional leaders, public servants and technical experts. And it will continue to provide effective security assistance and capacity building to Pacific police forces.

A future Labor government will also reinvigorate and expand the Australia Indonesia Partnership. Through a series of targeted aid programswe will target economic underdevelopment in parts of Indonesia and help provide more access to education for impoverished families.

Last, Labor will reinvigorate Radio Australia to provide a locally relevant voice for Australia in the region. Moving ahead in partnership with our region to promote democracy, security and stability is the best means of securing our future prosperity. Our failure to do so will result in evermore expensive emergency military and humanitarian interventions; refugees coming from the region to Australia in large numbers; greater risks to our own public health and the erosion of Australia’s long-term strategic standing in the region.

More information can be found:

http://www.alp.org.au/media/0707/speloo050.php