The May Budget marked the end of what I have categorised as the first stage of the Rudd Government’s new approach to Australia’s aid program – delivering on our promises. The Budget included the funding for our key election commitments:

Date:  08 August 2008

The May Budget increased the size of the aid program by around $500 million to $3.66 billion. This means Australia’s aid program will be equal to 0.32% of GNI in this financial year. While the extra half-billion dollars is a worthwhile increase in the aid budget, it is sobering to remember that even with this increase, Australia falls well short of the developed country average of 0.46% of GNI. We are starting so far behind that even with our commitment to increase aid to 0.5%, which will give us an aid program 2.5 times the size of our present one. Australia will still be behind the leading nations in terms of the proportion of our GNI going to development assistance.

The Government is committed to continue scaling up the aid program so that Australia once again returns to the club of nations pulling their weight in the fight against global poverty.

This year’s budget commitment defines the beginning of the second stage of the Rudd Government’s approach to international development – increasing the budget while increasing our effectiveness.

This includes:

• $150 million to help our Pacific neighbours adapt to effects of climate change;

• $45 million to establish Australian leadership on eliminating avoidable blindness in our region;

While a growing aid budget represents an excellent opportunity to make a real difference in the fight against poverty in our region, it also represents a significant challenge. The increasing budget comes with the responsibility to continue providing the best value for money to Australian taxpayers. This cannot be delivered by simply doing more of what has been done in the past. We need to find new ways of combating poverty in our region, and to continue improving our current methods.

Our commitment to excellence in aid delivery will remain critical as we go forward, and we must remember that behind the abstract targets that the world has set in the fight against poverty – the Millennium Development Goals – are the lives of real people.

We must also acknowledge that even if the MDG targets are met in our region, we will not have completed our job. While meeting MDG 1 and reducing by half the number of people in our region living on less than a dollar a day would be an outstanding achievement, it would still leave the other half living in abject poverty.

The May Budget represented the beginning of a new phase for my role as Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance, and I intend to pursue our commitment to improving the quality and quantity of our aid program – and I believe that we will be successful at both.

Hon Bob McMullan, MP Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance