Australia's role as an overseas development assistance provider has been a hot media topic this week:

• An article in the Sydney Morning Herald critiques the way AusAID designs and implements aid programs.
• Crikey is undertaking an entire series titled 'Who profits from our foreign aid?'
• Steve Lewis strikes again, with more than a sprinkle of hyperbole, unleashing another piece slamming Australia's aid program. Steve's articles would benefit from taking stock of the realities and challenges involved in implementing aid programs in developing countries that only have access to very limited resources – success is not guaranteed, as discussed here and here.
• While Australia and PNG take a positive step and sign agreements to review Australia's $450 million aid program to PNG, it is important to note what isn't being said on the state of affairs in PNG.
• The Australian newspaper argues that it is time to challenge the 'virtuous aura around aid' and that the Australian general public should be better informed in this area.

With our mainstream media now commenting regularly on Australia's overseas development assistance and often highlighting only faults and inadequacies, isn't it time the Australian Government, through AusAID, made a greater effort to promote the success stories and engage the Australian public, considering it is set to fund Australia's increasing aid budget?

Paul Davies responds to Danielle Cave:

Danielle Cave writes: 'With our mainstream media now commenting regularly on Australia's overseas development assistance and often highlighting only faults and inadequacies, isn't it time the Australian Government, through AusAID, made a greater effort to promote the success stories and engage the Australian public, considering it is set to fund Australia's increasing aid budget?'

Really? Really? 

The answer to legitimate scrutiny of the value for money delivered by our taxpayer funded aid program is the diversion of further taxpayer funds to make Australians feel better about the money they are already spending?

I'm sorry, but this strikes me as just the sort of self-dealing that actually DOES raise real questions about the validity of the spending our government does in the name of development assistance. I would think a more appropriate response to 'regular mainstream media commentary' on Australia's development assistance would be to ensure aid spending actually does result in improvements in the sort of development indicators that actually matter — life expectancy, educational attainment, physical and communications connectivity — otherwise a skeptical examination from media is, at the very least, warranted.

Love the blog.  Am not very often moved to respond but this comment invited a corrective.

Paul Davies makes some good points in his response to my post on promoting Australia’s aid program. Certainly donors' primary goal should be to work towards improving development indicators. I agree that critical examination from the media is warranted — hence my links to those articles in my post.

However, my post did not equate engagement with the public to an increase in spending (of taxpayer dollars). Communication with the Australian public is vital and can be significantly improved using existing resources. It is an important tool of transparency and accountability — each of which are absolutely essential for any publically-funded aid program, particularly one in the midst of huge transformation, in terms of both size (with a rapidly increasing budget) and geographical direction. Significant improvements can and should be made in this area.

The Australian aid budget has been under some fairly heavy scrutiny this year. A good deal of this is warranted, yet some is exaggerated, and still more fails to present a full picture. Scrutiny is important and justified, no qualms here regarding that. The aim of my post was to point out that the bulk of the media coverage of Australia's aid program rarely exposes us to the full story. I want to know more about Australia’s aid program — the good, the bad and the ugly. At the moment, as a member of the Australian public, it seems I am only fed the ugly — which is simply one dimension of a much larger story.

Two responses to our recent debate thread on whether Australia should be doing more to promote its foreign aid.

Below, thoughts from John Cheong-Holdaway. But first, Alex Douglas, who is working in Nepal on peacebuilding issues including the country's Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration Program:

A debate has recently emerged among Lowy bloggers on whether Australia should be 'making a greater effort to promote the success stories' of Australian aid.

Any effort to promote the success stories of foreign aid is likely to distort Australia’s programs. Success stories that attract media and public attention are invariably about how aid has helped an individual; be them an illiterate woman, an HIV patient, or a rural farmer. Chasing these photogenic personal success stories will further distort Australia’s aid program to focus on  projects rather on systems. Aid will flow to building a new school in a remote village rather than reforming the host country’s government education system. Australian money will go to helping upgrade a hospital rather than improving the health system.

This is a problem for two main reasons:

Last week, both Alex and John made some important points and as this debate kicks on, which has been surprising but very interesting, there seem to be two broadly-defined camps emerging:

Camp 1 — promoting Australia's aid success stories is okay but has limitations;

Camp 2 — there is no need to promote success stories at all (and in fact some responses have insinuated it is wrong to do so).

Interestingly, responses have, so far, not taken a forward-looking approach to this debate. I would like to widen the debate and look further at my other initial point — engagement. There has been very little mention of whether it is important (or not?) for the Australian Government to engage with the Australian public on the future direction of its ballooning aid program.

Australia's aid budget for 2009-10 is $3.8 billion and is set to ramp up to 0.5% of Australia's Gross National Income by 2015-16 and hit an estimated figure of $8-9 billion. In five years Australia will have one of the world's largest aid budgets, behind only the US, Japan, France, Germany and the UK if you look at current OECD development assistance figures (country donors only).

With Australia's aid budget set to more than double over the next few years surely it is both wise and fair (to the Australian public) that this will be accompanied by an increase in public engagement. By engagement I mean establishing a clear dialogue with the public over this unprecedented increase – what is the strategic vision for this additional $4-5 billion? How will this money be spent? Where will the money be spent? And while we are here asking the tough questions it may be worth asking why?

Chris Roche from Oxfam Australia writes:

I think Danielle Cave raises a number of important points, particularly regarding the critical need to get the Australian public involved in the debate.

A recent review of the Paris Declaration noted that there is a real danger of the aid effectiveness debate becoming limited to the domain of aid technocrats. They suggest that if there is not broader dialogue involving parliamentarians and citizens then support for aid can be subject to political reversals, or other more high profile issues.

I think, for that reason, Danielle is correct in arguing for the government investing in greater public awareness on this issue. However, I also think we need to be starting to explore the potential for greater citizen-to-citizen dialogue and exchange.

Arguably, shortening the accountability chain between the 'taxpayer' and those people that aid seeks to ultimately benefit might put all sorts of interesting new pressures on the system, as well as promote a more honest dialogue. We already know that when citizens can hold service provider to account more directly, through social accountability processes, this makes a real difference.