Trevor Richards: We're clean, green - and mingy

Opinion

For many people in well-off countries such as New Zealand, the world is a global village. For the quarter of the world's population, who struggle to survive on the equivalent of about $1.40 a day, their village is their globe. More often than not it is a tough and miserable place.

In the eight years I was Volunteer Service Abroad's Africa programme manager, I lost count of the number of people in eastern and southern Africa whom I would meet in any one year and who never made it into the following year.

HIV/Aids kills many. So does malaria. Every year more than 10 million children around the world die from preventable diseases. In sub-Saharan Africa, women are 100 times more likely to die as a consequence of pregnancy or childbirth than in a country such as New Zealand. Underlying most deaths is a suffocating exposure to poverty.

Sir Edmund Hillary wrote in 2002 that the poor "did not ask to live in poverty, any more than we are responsible for living in affluence. The fact that we do is a blessing, and with it comes responsibilities".

Non-governmental organisations can do a surprising amount to help to reduce global and regional inequalities, but it is the governments of the world that have the capacity to radically reduce such inequalities.

In 2000 New Zealand signed up at the United Nations to eight millennium development goals. These included halving the number of people living in extreme poverty, ensuring that all girls and boys complete primary school and reducing by three-quarters the number of women dying in child-birth. The target date for achieving these goals is 2015.

Five years on it appears that these and other of the goals are not going to be met, mainly because too many wealthy countries - New Zealand included - have not been prepared to match rhetoric with money. Put simply, New Zealand has not been pulling its weight.

A few weeks before the Budget was presented, I sat at the back of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's conference room in Paris, listening to the findings of an OECD review of New Zealand's aid programme.

The OECD, consisting of the world's 30 most developed nations, applauded many aspects of the New Zealand programme. For example, there was praise for its capacity to deliver highly effective development aid in poor and conflict-torn countries such as the Solomon Islands.

There was, however, one major criticism: why was the level of New Zealand's help so low? The internationally agreed target for Government spending on aid is 0.7 per cent of gross national income. In contributing just 0.23 per cent to aid last year, New Zealand languished near the bottom of the developed world.

The criticism was not that we were not up there with Norway (0.92 per cent) and Denmark (0.84 per cent) but that we lagged so far behind the member country average of 0.42 per cent.

The message to New Zealand was clear: increase the level of spending. A programme of medium-term increases in aid was called for.

Did the Budget deliver? The Government points out that the $383 million allocated in the Budget is $59.4 million more than was announced in the 2004 Budget - an increase of 21 per cent.

On the surface such an increase seems most commendable but just how laudable is it? Consider this: the 0.7 per cent of gross national income figure was agreed, too, in 1970 - more than 30 years ago. In 1974, the third Labour Government promised 1 per cent. By the time it had left office in 1975, the overseas development aid budget was 0.52 per cent of gross national income.

Move forward 30 years. The percentage of gross national income New Zealand is allocating this year to its international aid and development programme is 0.27 per cent, not much more than half of what had been reached in 1975.

Furthermore, many development agencies do not accept that this year has seen an increase in aid and development levels. It all depends on how the figures are used. They argue that when the money allocated to tsunami relief is added to last year' budgeted allocation, the amount is about the same.

What is indisputable, however, is that last year, of the world's wealthy nations, only the United States, Italy and Japan gave a smaller percentage of their gross national income than New Zealand. Even our brash Australian cousins, not always noted for their caring, sensitive side, will give a higher percentage (0.28 per cent) this year than New Zealand, a figure the Government says it will not reach until 2007-08.

There is no expectation that it should move immediately to 0.7 per cent, but there is a serious and urgent requirement that a timetable is announced showing the steps by which this goal will be reached.

All but six of the world's most developed nations have set timeframes for increasing their overseas development aid levels to the 0.7 per cent target by 2015. New Zealand is one of the few that have not.

The decision by 15 European nations to increase aid levels to 0.51 per cent of gross national income by 2010 and to 0.7 per cent by 2015 is a major breakthrough. The ball is now in New Zealand's court.

If we do not respond in a clear and positive way, many people, already puzzled and disappointed by our poor showing, will find it increasingly hard to give us the benefit of any doubt.

Our image in Europe is that of a clean and green, caring and sharing society. But as French friends involved in the development sector have commented, "Given your social democratic internationalist ideals, why is it that your overseas development aid levels are so abysmally low?"

It's a good question. The answer is probably because at one level all politicians respond to their electorates, and this issue is not on the New Zealand political radar.

This is not, however, an excuse for the Government to renege on its international obligations. Sometimes, governments lead public opinion, sometimes they follow. Now is the time for the Government, on this issue, to do some leading.

* Paris-based Trevor Richards is a former VSA Africa programme leader.