Dialogue: Overseas aid designed to make Pacific safer place

Establishing a semi-autonomous agency to deliver foreign aid means we will get better value for our money, writes MATT ROBSON*.

New Zealanders pay $226 million a year in aid. That is a lot of money. Taxpayers have a right to know not only where it is going, but whether it is doing its job when it gets there. Its job, put simply, is to reduce poverty.

Although there had been other reviews of aid over the past 10 years, all of them useful, I wanted a fresh analysis when I became the minister in charge of aid. So a new review was commissioned to look at what we do with aid now and what we should do with it the future.

This review, Towards Excellence in Aid Delivery, has been somewhat controversial. It reveals that we were not always getting value for money, through no fault of staff on the ground, who against the odds often do a tremendous job delivering aid to donor countries. Rather, the fault was systemic.

The review argued that the only way to guarantee aid could do its job properly was to put it at arm's length from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The necessary goals of foreign policy and trade are sometimes at odds with the goals of aid, said the review.

For example, we give aid to stop people starving, to teach them the basics, to read and write, to give them an opportunity to live, and to live fulfilled lives. We do not give aid in exchange for trade, and neither should we. It is important that there is no blurring of edges between trade and aid, the review recommended.

It was clear also that most New Zealanders did not want those edges blurred. In a recent survey, 71 per cent of New Zealanders supported giving aid for humanitarian reasons.

The review also recommended that we reduce the number of countries we give aid to - at present 63. We are a small country with limited money and cannot afford to spread our aid too thinly across the world.

We should cut the number of countries we give aid to and concentrate on our region, the Pacific, where we can have the most effect, said the review.

It also recommended dropping the rotational staffing system in the delivery of aid. This system makes sense within Foreign Affairs, where staff changing their postings regularly develop their experience and versatility. It does not make sense in the delivery of aid where you need continuity of programme staff and specialised expertise to ensure a long-term aid programme is as effective as possible. Staff on the ground want the opportunity to do the best job they can, and moving them on too soon was not maximising quality or performance.

Having analysed this review at great length, with the help of the State Services Commission, the Treasury and the Department of the Prime Minster, the Government has decided to make substantial changes.

A new semi-autonomous aid agency will be established, still with its ties to Foreign Affairs maintained, but with a separate mission statement, its own top executive and its appropriation in the Budget.

The new agency will have the ability to recruit and build a team of specialist staff (many of them working in the old aid unit already). Aid staff will no longer be rotated. Soon we will advertise for a top executive for the new agency and we hope to have someone in the job early next year.

The new agency will focus on the Pacific mainly, although not exclusively. It will look at reducing the number of countries that New Zealand gives aid to. It will focus on poverty reduction, on basic education and on good governance in the Pacific.

This is what New Zealanders want done with their aid money. Donor countries will see a much more focused and effective aid programme.

But what else is in it for New Zealand? Quite simply, security.

If we can support good governance and poverty reduction in our region, we are much less likely to see coups in Fiji or trouble in the Solomons, or elsewhere.

Poverty is a plague which breeds violence and despair. It wears many hats: lack of food and the basic necessities of life, of course, but also poverty of opportunity, environmental degradation and the absence of hope for the future.

Today we are seeing boat-loads of refugees drifting homeless at sea. They are looking for a better life. They are escaping poverty.

Many of us are still coming to terms with the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on the United States ever. Well-directed aid will make our backyard a safer place because aid can help to make it better where people come from.

Then people will have less reason to leave their home country and less reason to hate.

* Matt Robson is the Associate Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade.