Under National, New Zealand’s international development aid has lurched to the right. Our Government’s overseas aid agency NZAID was dissolved back into the foreign ministry, and Foreign Minister Murray McCully has made economic development the goal rather than it being a means to achieve poverty reduction. He is re-focusing the aid programme around economic development and can hardly conceal his contempt for the UN Millenium Development Goals.
So it was mildly amusing to see Mr McCully and Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd speak at a joint press conference today after their meeting in Canberra. Mr McCully said they spent “a lot of time talking about our joint and shared responsibilities within this region”. And “…because we’re the dominant providers of development assistance within the region, that means we have to set the pace and set the example.”
In answer to a question from an Australian journalist Mr Rudd explained Australia’s policy on aid which to be fair is mainstream among most OECD countries. It’s just quite a long way from the current New Zealand policy:
Remember our organising principle here is reducing poverty. That is the organising principle of the Millennium Development Goals, reducing poverty by effective investment in primary healthcare, effective investment in universal primary education and effective investment in the basic levels of governance and infrastructure necessary for growth to occur.
I think the choking sound in the background must have been Mr McCully.
What percentage of aid is spent on resources to be consumed, i.e. food, medical supplies and what percentage is for infrastructure development..?
Kevin Rudd was quick to congratulate Aung San Suu Kyi on her release from house arrest, and offer support. Key seemed puzzled as to who she was, and not a word from McCully.
What percentage of aid is spent on resources to be consumed, i.e. food, medical supplies and what percentage is for infrastructure development..?
I believe it would be hard to pull the most recent statistics on this right now, as NZAID has been absolutely hammered by McCully.
From talk about town, the portion of NZAID that is going to go into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade will be much smaller, and what it will be able to focus on is hard to imagine.
No, the choking sound is Phil (who the hell is the guy with all those moles) Goff, as he contemplates how the hell is going to stop looking out of his depth at every turn.
Actually Dave if we are talking foreign policy (as we are on this post), the guy who looks out of his depth is the Prime Minister. Not so much out of his depth but awestruck by the celebrities he meets at APEC, East Asia Summit etc. Phil Goff is widely acknowledged as having been one of the hardest working, most competent and effective foreign ministers we’ve had for a very long time.
Hi Jeremy,
That’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer because, for example, if we give money to the Samoa government to spend on on Health it might be spent on health infrastructure (building hospitals), or it might be spent on the salaries of nurses, or it might be spent on bandages. And aggregate aid totals won’t differentiate between the three.
However, if you want to know what sector aid money is spent on (health, education, roads etc) the OECD’s CRS database can help you. Although please bear in mind that the numbers it produces are definitely not perfectly accurate.
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=CRSNEW
I’ve extracted the 2008 (most recent year available) figures for NZ – they are in 2008 USD and, as I said, are not perfectly accurate.
You can download them here:
http://waylaiddialectic.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/new-zealand-aid-stats-08.pdf
cheers
Terence
Cheers Terence, interesting…