At the heart of the MDGs is the goal of eradicating poverty. One of the success stories of the MDGs is that, for the first time since poverty trends began to be monitored, the number of people living in poverty began to fall in every developing region. The proportion of people living on less than US$1.25 a day fell from 47% in 1990 to 24% in 2008. 

East Asia has achieved spectacular success in reducing poverty, with extreme poverty falling to 13.8% of the population, a drop from just under one billion people in 1990 to 284 million in 2008. By 2025, four of the world's 10 largest economies will be in Asia. Asia will account for almost half of the world's economic output and China for about half of that. Furthermore, the combined output of China and India is expected to exceed that of the G7 (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan) by the early 2020s. Australia's Asian Century White Paper notes that in 1980, income per capita in developing countries in Asia was about one-thirtieth of that in the US. By 2025, the gap will be down to one-quarter, owing to increased economic opportunities, improved health care and better access to quality education. 

So as East Asia continues to drive down regional poverty at a remarkable rate, one might question the relevance to the region of any globally inclusive set of development goals which have poverty eradication at their core. Yet alongside the success of Asia lies the Pacific experience, where Pacific Island countries have struggled and largely failed to meet the MDG targets. The challenge, then, is achieving a global development framework that resonates with countries as different as China and Tuvalu.

The Lowy Institute, in partnership with University of Melbourne, the Asia Foundation and ANU is hosting a conference in Melbourne next week late this week to examine the role of aid in Asia and the Pacific beyond 2015. The conference aims to flag three important considerations for any post-2015 development framework: 

• The scale of Asia's growth over coming decades will make it the world's biggest economic zone, increasingly able to address its own poverty challenges.
• What does this changing face of poverty in Asia mean for the future of aid?
• And as the international development agenda evolves, what chance is there of achieving a global framework that is relevant to Asia and the Pacific?

How the conference answers these questions will be the subject of a follow-up post.

Photo by Flickr user TylerIngram.

Funding public international broadcasting to promote a country's image and influence foreign publics isn't unique to Australia. We have reputable company including the BBC, Voice of America, CCTV (China) and NHK (Japan). But we are unique when it comes to contracting out what is a core element in Australia's soft power tool box.

In a Lowy Institute report, International Broadcasting and its Contribution to Public Diplomacy, which I co-authored in 2010 with Alex Oliver, we analysed the lessons coming out of the experiences of other countries' international broadcasters as well as our own. We concluded that Australia's international broadcasters – both Radio Australia and Australia Network – operate in a unique geopolitical environment that is of core geo-strategic interest to Australia. Public broadcasting is a versatile tool for achieving a breadth of public diplomacy objectives, which include providing an alternative source of information and ideas to countries without robust media systems of their own, communicating with Australia's diaspora and projecting national identities.

But we identified five essentials for an international broadcaster to achieve public diplomacy goals: credibility, financial security, legislative protection, strategic direction and longevity. Sadly for Australia Network and its predecessors, successive governments' handling of its public international television service has stretched the first essential, undermined the second, been two decades late in considering the third, lacks understanding of the fourth and questioned the fifth.

Good luck, Australia Network!

Photo by Flickr user ROSS HONG KONG.

• 603 million women live in countries where violence against them is not considered a crime.

The beliefs

• Preliminary data from a recent AusAID-funded survey in Vanuatu indicates that about three out of every  four people – both men and women — believe there are times when a woman should be beaten. In a similar survey in PNG last year, 63% of the men and 55% of the women interviewed agreed with the proposition that violence against women often happens because the woman is asking for it by nagging or criticising her partner. 
• Commenting after her visit to PNG in 2012, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women Rashida Manjoo said 'Domestic violence is socially perceived as a normal aspect of a woman's life and a family matter that should not be discussed publicly.'

The economic cost

• The annual economic cost of violence against women and their children in Australia has been estimated at $13.6 billion.
• In Canada, the annual economic cost has been estimated at C$6.9 billion.
• According to the Commission on the Status of Women, gender violence strips 1.78% off Vietnam's yearly gross domestic product.

And finally, the irony

Promoting gender equality and empowering women is one of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals. Yet that same goal says nothing about reducing or eliminating violence against women.

Photo by Flickr user iamtheo.

Australia is certainly not alone in deciding to use aid money in this way. OECD figures show that the US spent US$885 million of its total aid budget on this in 2010, France US$435 million, Sweden US$397 million, and Canada US$284 million. Switzerland spent almost 16% of its total aid budget on this item.

So the amount the Government wants to spend isn't out of the ballpark and it is internationally recognised as a legitimate use of official aid money. What makes us different is that the Government didn't want to tell us and it took a leak from Treasury for it to get into the public arena.

This doesn't necessarily make it bad policy. What does make it bad is the impact this has on our reputation as a development partner. The money being diverted from this year's aid budget, so late in the year, will come from scheduled and planned aid programs developed in consultation with Australia's developing partners. We don't know who they are because the Government hasn't told us. So we have to assume that there will be a mixture of bilateral partners and multilateral organisations which had been led to believe that Australia would be supporting them in some project in health or education or another important development priority. Now, that activity won't go ahead or will be delayed.

Cutting programs isn't bad in itself – what's bad is when it's unilaterally and secretly decided, when it remains unexplained and when it runs counter to stated policy and operational imperatives.

Photo by Flickr user Leo Reynolds.

What do you think the much lauded Colombo Plan was all about? Or tell me that the $250 million in aid that goes to Solomon Islands isn't in our mutual interest. Or that the presence of Australian aid supporting the Vietnamese Government in the early days of Doi Moi wasn't in our mutual interest. Or that the extensive development cooperation we have with Indonesia (our largest recipient) isn't in our mutual interest. And then tell me that none of that has been successful on both humanitarian and national interest grounds.

As for Garth's desire for other parts of government to deal with the self-interest, does this mean they should cease supporting the humanitarian goals of the aid program? Perhaps the ADF should stay at home next time there's a humanitarian crisis in the neighbourhood. Or perhaps Foreign Affairs officials shouldn't be involved in development cooperation negotiations or international humanitarian law discussions.

AusAID isn't an NGO; it's an arm of government and sits within the Foreign Affairs portfolio. Its status as an official development agency means that it is going to be called upon to use its development expertise to support broader government objectives.

There are times when this goes too far – last week's announcement about support to Manus Island is arguably a good example of that – but there is no impenetrable boundary which quarantines the government's aid program from the broader suite of Australia's international engagement.

Indeed, if AusAID did attempt to create such a barrier, its days would be numbered on one hand.

Photo courtesy of the Defence Department.

The first is a geostrategic implication. Australia has traditionally viewed itself along with New Zealand as an outrider in a developing and at times unstable neighbourhood. As a result, one important element of the Australian aid program, along with humanitarian assistance and poverty reduction, has been to support and protect Australia's national interest in this challenging terrain.

It's time to rewrite that narrative as Asian economies discard the 'developing' tag and offer alternative development models based on their own successful efforts to grow their economies.

The second implication is linked to the aid program's aim to reduce poverty. Again, the traditional narrative reinforcing the geographic focus on our neighbourhood has been that the bulk of the world's extreme poor live in Asia. But the astounding success of the region in addressing extreme poverty means that instead of more than half of Asia living in extreme poverty, which was the case in 1990, the percentage will be less than 10% by 2015. Instead of almost 1 billion Asians existing in awful circumstances, the number will be down to 159 million. 

This doesn't mean the fight against poverty is over; instead, the battleground has changed. Rather than the poor living in low income countries, the majority of them (60%) are living in newly emerged economies. So the question of inequity within increasingly wealthy countries becomes the focal point and demands a new relationship between development partners.

The third implication is linked to my original question. With the projected economic growth in Asia, what should Australia be doing with at least some of the one-third of its aid budget now dedicated to Asia? Doesn't this open opportunities for moving away from 20th century thinking about aid, and adopting innovative responses to the global issues affecting all of us, such as climate change, access to clean water and transboundary health issues?

As the international community considers what will replace the Millennium Development Goals, which reach their deadline in 2015, there is a rare opportunity to use the Asian Century dynamics to discard outdated post-colonial and post-Cold War approaches which still meander through the aid and development world.

Photo by Flickr user CHAIWATPHOTOS.

This isn't the first time the regime has expelled an international team looking at workers' rights. In December last year, Australian union officials were denied entry after their aircraft arrived in Nadi. Fiji's Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, said at the time that the delegation was not welcome because it would not be fair or objective. This is despite the regime's earlier open invitation to investigate the allegations of breaches of human and labour rights in the country.

So what we are seeing is a regime which is generous with words but whose actions negate the rhetoric.

This must be making it increasingly difficult for Canberra and in particular Foreign Minister Carr. Just two months ago, Carr, along with his New Zealand counterpart, brokered an important breakthrough in the Fijian stalemate with the agreement to reinstate their top diplomats and to consider softening travel sanctions. I argued at the time that the return of the high commissioners to Canberra, Wellington and Suva meant that the communication channels would again be open at the highest levels.

A good thing, because this latest about-face by the regime means there will have to be some pretty tough words communicated. Best they come from the most senior levels.

Photo by Flickr user rachel_titiriga.

However, those same leaders must have been struck by the fact that this year's Forum attracted three of the world's politically most powerful women. Aside from Julia Gillard, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended the post-forum dialogue and Executive Director of UN Women and former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet was a guest speaker at the main forum meeting.

While Hillary Clinton's attendance had more to do with increasing the profile of US engagement in the Pacific than the equality of women, her presence and long-standing reputation for strongly supporting gender equality helped to reinforce the message Gillard and Bachelet gave to the forum about the need to address gender inequality across the region. Gillard is backing her words with a major funding initiative to support Pacific women's efforts to improve their political, social and economic opportunities.

But money aside, there is a very attractive potency for Pacific women in the image of these three powerful women who themselves have dealt with sexism and other anti-female behaviour in their ultimately very successful careers.

While there was media speculation about the reasons for the change, including presumed pressure by Australia to further isolate Fiji, the US maintained that PNG was chosen because it was the growing economic power in the Pacific. Comments by Clinton earlier this year provided more context. She made it clear in her testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that cuts to the foreign affairs budget, which includes aid, would hit US efforts to compete with China's rising power. She cited both PNG and Fiji as countries in the Pacific where China had increased its influence.

Pacific island countries, once distant from the centres of economic power, now find themselves in the backyard of the world's ascendant economic power, China. On economic grounds alone, these new circumstances provide evolving and growing opportunities for Pacific island countries to increase engagement with China.

The rise in China's influence across the region is evident on a number of fronts, notably its donor activities.

While it is difficult to ascertain with any certainty the size of China's aid program because of a lack of comprehensive public information, a report released in 2011 by the Lowy Institute estimated that China's soft loans to the region had increased from US$23 million in 2005 to over US$183 million in 2009. Based on the Lowy Institute's findings, China appeared to be the third-largest donor to the region in 2009 after Australia and the US. Aside from the aid relationship, the region's trade with China has also grown steadily over the past 10 years, increasing by seven times on average for Pacific island countries in that time.

On the other hand, America's latest aid initiative in the Pacific is financially modest, although its longstanding annual payments to the three Micronesian Compact States (Palau, Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia) maintain its position as the second-highest OECD donor to the region. But Washington is supplementing its aid investment with an increased physical presence through the opening of the Port Moresby office as well as more regular and significantly higher profile visits.

For the Pacific's developing countries, increasing Chinese and American interest provides opportunities to consider alternatives to Australia. Economically, Australia dominates in this region. Of the 16 members of the Pacific Island Forum, 14 are developing countries with a significant proportion of their development aid coming from the other two members, Australia and New Zealand. More than 50% of all donor funding to the region comes from Australia.

While Australia's generous aid program reflects in part Canberra's recognition of the region's core geo-strategic relevance, the role of chief banker has tended to dominate bilateral relationships. It's time to look again at the state of those relationships and, like the US, put less emphasis on scaling up the aid and more on the substance and profile of the engagement.

As Australia goes to the Pacific Islands Forum, pockets no doubt brimming with new aid initiatives, it should look for other ways to engage and be seen to be engaging with Pacific island states on the broader menu of shared issues. As the US-China Pacific play-off shows, there's more to the Pacific than aid projects.

But in March, Jenny argued on this blog that 'for the first time in some years, the stars may be aligning for a change in the relationship: Bob Carr's appointment as Foreign Minister and a constructive and positive announcement from Commodore Bainimarama...on a constitutional consultations process.'

Since then the steps have been incremental but, as can be seen by this week's trilateral meeting in Sydney, they are significant. The re-instatement of high commissioners in Suva, Canberra and Wellington means communication channels at the highest levels are again opening. And if travel sanctions are softened, it will enable direct person to person contact to be resumed at senior political levels.

Australia's policy objective throughout the six years since Bainimarama took power has been to support Fiji's return to full democracy. But achieving that objective had been constrained until now by Australia's own policy, which has severely limited the opportunity for communication and dialogue. This latest development is essential for moving the democratic process forward.

Photo by Flickr user heyyu.

Once the winning candidates are announced, the real counting begins to determine who has the numbers to form government. With a record 3435 candidates and 46 parties contesting 111 seats, it's impossible to predict the outcome. After the last election, in 2007, Sir Michael Somare required a coalition of seven parties plus the support of some independent MPs to become prime minister.

Access to money became an increasingly important factor in recent PNG elections. In this election, some candidates have access to large amounts of cash thanks to the income accruing from the sale of the country's mineral resources at a time of high commodity prices. This income is not being distributed equitably and the country's basic services continue to deteriorate, but it is being used by some political contenders to buy the influence they need to win.

Another important factor in this election is mobile telephony. In the past five years, the mobile phone network has expanded and the proportion of people with phones has grown from 4% to between 30% and 48%. This influences the election in two ways.

Firstly, it has made campaigning considerably easier. Communication between and to the voters has been able to leapfrog over the old, inadequate and largely inaccessible fixed line technology only available in the main urban centres, where just 12% of PNG's population lives. Mobile phones are now used as a means to influence previously inaccessible voters and by voters to inform each other.

The second implication relates to who ultimately forms government. It takes five weeks from the first day of polling to the posting of the results. But even when the results are known, it can take several weeks before a government is formed. This is because no one party is likely to have sufficient numbers to claim government. Instead, deals will need to be brokered to ensure there is sufficient support for what is likely to be a coalition of parties with support from independents.

In the past, the practice has been to physically stop rival parties from getting access to these independents by taking the independents to isolated hotel resorts where brokering and bargaining is carried out over several days. But in the era of mobile telephony there is no benefit to physical isolation, as independents can use mobile phones to bid their price upward among parties competing for their support. In all likelihood, this will raise the cost of doing business for the big parties. The figure currently being bandied about as the price of support is $250,000 but it may go higher.

PNG's sitting Prime Minister, Peter O'Neill, has already been declared the winner in his electorate, where counting was completed before the end of the polling period. This early announcement attracted widespread criticism because his was the only electorate to be counted before the end of official polling. But part of the annoyance is because it gives O'Neill a head start in the bidding war for the independents who could be the key to retaining his job.  

Photo by Alexander Rheeney.

Earlier in the year, O'Neill and other senior members of his government painted a confused picture about the election timetable, resulting in a decision just last month that the elections would be deferred for six months. But in the wake of public protests, O'Neill made public assurances that the elections would proceed as scheduled.

With the political turmoil refusing to settle, many hopes have been pinned on the June national elections as a way to finally resolve the situation. But a disturbing development in recent months is the emerging partisan divisions within the country's security forces. Together with the legislative pressure and physical threats made against the country's judiciary, there is now concern about how the tensions will play out during the election process.

Today, 24 May, is the closing date for those running in the June elections to get their nominations into the electoral commission. O'Neill's threats of arrest for the three Supreme Court judges who handed down this week's decision are ringing out across the country. The likelihood of anything less than a hostile, violence-ridden and contentious election never looked higher.

Photo by Flickr user East-West Center.

It's not well understood that much of Australia's aid is provided bilaterally. That means aid programs are, in AusAID's own words, 'planned and implemented jointly with the partner government'. An example of how this works is PNG, where around 90% of the aid allocated is channeled through PNG government bodies in line with PNG's development priorities. Major Australian-funded development programs, such as supporting the PNG Government to improve its health services or increase the number of children attending school, are multi-year, complex activities not dissimilar to any major government investment in Australia. They require extensive planning and funding predictability.

In other words, bilateral aid isn't charity. It's not something that can be postponed with a couple of months' notice without some impact on the recipient government's own ledgers.

So it's for sound reasons that Australia has long been a leading proponent of funding predictability to bolster the effectiveness of aid. The most recent example was just six months ago, when Australia's then Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd, signed Australia up to the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation. That declaration, endorsed by 159 countries, makes clear that predictability is a core principle underpinning aid effectiveness.

Yet just six months after signing onto this commitment, Rudd's successor, Bob Carr, found himself in a very awkward situation on budget night. While he was releasing the welcome Comprehensive Aid Policy Framework, his colleague, Treasurer Wayne Swan, was undermining the good aid principles it represented by reneging on Australia's aid commitment.

And the consequences? Apart from giving aid partners less than two months' notice about major changes to the flow of Australia's funding over the next five years, it must be making the broader international community reflect on just how reliable Australia is when it comes to the international commitments it signs onto.

Photo by Flickr user dibytes.

In response, the Government has insisted that if the regime took even the smallest step towards restoring democracy, it would respond positively. So the question now is whether the findings of the Ministerial Contact Group are enough for Australia to start looking at what that response might be.

It is certainly in Australia's interest to give serious thought to taking that move. It is whispered, but there is a growing view internationally that Australia has not given sufficient priority to the impasse with Fiji.

This impression was reinforced by Kevin Rudd's limited public commentary and involvement in the issue during his term as foreign minister. Rudd's public statements on Fiji were mostly condemnatory, and it was Parliamentary Secretary for the Pacific Richard Marles who represented Australia at last year's Ministerial Contact Group meeting. As energetic and dedicated as Marles is, he remains a junior minister. The signal of delegating responsibility for Fiji to Marles would not have been missed by the Pacific and the broader international community.

It now looks as though the Fiji policy baton has been passed back to the rightful person. Carr needs to be encouraged to grasp it firmly and use it to make the long-awaited positive response.

Photo courtesy of the Pacific Island Forum.

However, perhaps the question should be: can Australia afford not to increase its aid budget? Just a quick look at a map shows you that Australia, along with New Zealand, sits in a region where all our neighbours are developing countries. Three-quarters of the world's extreme poor are living in this region. And this is despite the enormous advances in reducing poverty in Asia since the 1980s.

While addressing global poverty is worthwhile in humanitarian terms, it's not the only reason Australia does it. There is a very tangible national interest at stake, underscored by the well-documented linkages between development and political stability. In other words, development supports the conditions essential for maintaining stability and diminishing the likelihood for dissent and conflict. Again, looking at the map, you can see why Australia would want stable and prosperous neighbours.

So if the government does decide to weaken its aid commitment, it will also be weakening one of the most significant soft power tools it has to address the fundamental threat to regional stability.

The 2011 Lowy Institute poll found that on average, Australians wanted 12% of the federal budget spent on foreign aid. Even with the recent increases, aid only represents around 1% of the budget. It would seem that there is popular support for a bigger aid budget. 

But what do you think? Is Australia's aid effectively addressing its dual role of addressing poverty and supporting Australia’s national interest? And if so, should the commitment to reach 0.5% of our national income by 2015/2016 be kept? Send your comments here: blogeditor@lowyinstitute.org .

This is a country where only six out of ten adults can read, and where the primary school enrolment rate dropped dramatically from 71% of primary school age children in 2000 to 56.2% in 2006. WHO reports that, while health expenditure per capita has more than doubled across the Western Pacific region since 1995, PNG's expenditure has remained static and stubbornly well below the region's average.

So what we are seeing in PNG is an extreme imbalance between national income and social development outcomes. And this latest drama of political manoeuvring threatens to exacerbate a deeper and graver governance malaise; the government isn't fulfilling its social contract.

Aside from the domestic implications for PNG, there are several potential strategic implications for Australia:

• The growing opportunity for external actors to manipulate the self-serving political system and capture resources valuable for PNG's own development.
• The continuing demise of basic services are exacerbating already existing transboundary problems such as the provision of health services along the PNG-Australia border in the Torres Strait.
• The threat of destabilisation in more remote parts of the country such as the Southern Highlands, where there is an arms build-up in the lead-up to the election.

PNG watchers often take heart from the fact that PNG has always managed to defy Australia's worst-case expectations and emerge whole from the political dramas that capture its government. However, that survival is in large part because of the resilience of the ordinary Papua New Guineans who have come to understand that they are excluded. That almost 90% of Papua New Guineans live in rural and remote parts is no doubt a major hindrance to more coordinated and determined demands for better government. That's lucky for the government – but it's not luck that they deserve.

Photo by Flickr user SouthernAnts.

There has been conjecture for some time that this expansion has to do with Australia's Rudd-led aspirations for a seat at the Security Council. By extension, it was thought Australia's aid program would continue to be the bearer of glad tidings to a wide array of the world's developing countries until at least the Security Council vote was decided. It will be interesting to see whether the same degree of ministerial energy and financial investment goes into this campaign in the months left before the vote in October.

The new minister may be less enthusiastic about applying aid funds to support what some see as a questionable and expensive campaign and one that is certainly not a core element of the aid program.

Even more importantly for the aid program, a new minister might just give AusAID some urgently needed breathing space to put in place and strengthen the mechanisms it absolutely must have if it is going to be an effective manager of what will soon be one of the top five spending agencies in the Commonwealth Government. Without genuinely transparent and publicly accessible monitoring, evaluation and reporting mechanisms, the media sniping the program suffered over the past couple of years will continue. This will only erode public support.

At the moment, the public receives information about the program largely through negative media reports. It is AusAID's (or, more correctly, the Government's) responsibility to provide openly and freely its findings and assessments of the programs implemented to overcome poverty and serve Australia's interests. Development is hard and requires tough decisions and at times an uncomfortable degree of risk taking. That reality doesn't need to be hidden; it needs to be shared with the people providing the money. But if the public isn't well informed and doesn't have access to the correct information, it will be the negative news that sways opinion.

Photo by Flickr user AusAID.

And while China only agreed to abide by the Busan document's 'principles, commitments and actions' on a voluntary basis — in contrast to the firm undertaking made by traditional donors such as Australia — the point is, it's there.

China isn't the only country included in this South-South roundup. The others include India, Brazil and South Africa. Reports vary as to who should be given the credit for the dogged diplomatic determination which eventually brought China into the donors' tent — Brazil, US, UK and Australia are all mentioned in dispatches.

For Australia, this is timely and significant. In response to the recommendations coming out of the review of Australia's aid program released earlier this year, the Government acknowledged that, in view of China's 'rapidly evolving stage of development and its large overseas aid program,' Australia's aid to China would be phased out. In tandem with this decision, it seems that Australia is scaling up its diplomatic efforts to shift its aid relationship with China from donor/recipient to donor/donor.

In part, this is all to do with the same good aid principles of transparency, cooperation and coordination which underpin the Busan document and its predecessors, the Paris Declaration (2005) and Accra Agenda for Action (2008).

But it also has much to do with Australia's own geo-political interests in the Pacific and other parts of Asia where China is increasing its aid footprint. The lack of transparency which surrounds China's aid programs in the Pacific has long been a significant source of concern and analysis, including by the Lowy Institute. Even the dollar amounts being provided by China remain unofficial estimations, as noted in the Lowy Institute's most recent report on China's aid activities in the Pacific.

But with China's agreement to sign onto the Busan document comes an important opportunity for both countries to turn the aid effectiveness principles into reality. It might be a small step with no promises made — but it is a shared starting point.

* South-South is aid shorthand for aid and development co-operation between developing and emerging economies as opposed to North (developed)-South(developing) cooperation.

Photo courtesy of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Government-funded international broadcasting has played an important role globally in advancing strategic and national interests for more than 80 years. And despite the rise of online and social media, a number of countries have continued to invest significant amounts in their international broadcasting efforts as part of targeted public diplomacy programs. One country that stands out is China, which is reportedly investing around US$6 billion in its bid to influence foreign opinion.

Radio Australia and more recently its television counterpart, Australia Network, have been longstanding components of Australia's soft power approach. They broadcast into a unique geopolitical environment.

As we concluded in our report, Australia is one of the most prosperous middle powers on the globe and occupies a privileged place in the Asia Pacific. Our neighbours include some of the poorer and less stable nations of the Pacific as well as some of the most populous and increasingly successful economies of the world. Building trust, promoting understanding, and engaging these nations by projecting our image and generating interest in our culture, expertise, ideals and values benefits Australia's long-term interests. International broadcasting is a powerful tool which Australia can wield to advance those interests.

But for two decades now, Australian governments have created policy, operational and budget uncertainty for our international broadcasters. Threatened with annihilation by the Howard Government, the broadcasters eventually survived but at significant operational cost, including the outsourcing of the television service to the Seven Network. This unhappy union dissolved in 2001 when Seven shut it down because of its lack of commercial viability and unpredictable government funding. It was soon resurrected, with the ABC winning a new five-year tender in 2001 and again in 2005. It's been operating the service ever since.

The resilience of Australia Network and Radio Australia to not just survive but to deliver on Australia's soft power objectives, despite government vacillation, suggests they have the potential to further Australia's national interests. But to do so, they need to be credible, independent, financially secure and strategically relevant. It can only be hoped that this latest decision will give Australia Network the predictable base it needs to fulfil its soft power role.

* The report was commissioned by the ABC.

Photo by Flickr user :teymur madjderey.

Paris was two years later and this time the meeting had grown to representatives from 100 donors and developing countries with ministers, heads of agencies and other officials signing onto the Paris Declaration of Aid Effectiveness. In the aid-speak words of the declaration, the themes were ownership (developing countries were to be in charge of their own development); alignment (donors were to help developing countries meet their own development priorities, not the donors'); harmonisation (donors were to talk to each other to avoid duplication and reduce the administrative demands on the developing country); managing for results (there had to be a successful outcome); and mutual accountability (all parties to answer to their own parliaments and taxpayers).

Three years later, the Accra meeting added another set of should-do aid effectiveness actions set out in the aptly named Accra Agenda for Action. Still in aid speak (no translations provided this time), the additional principles aim to get donors to provide some assurances about future budget commitments, developing countries were urged to improve their own processes and systems, donors were asked to be less prescriptive about how aid money was spent in-country, and they were also asked to stop insisting that goods and services be purchased from the donor's own country. 

Next week's meeting in Busan will review how the expanding aid effectiveness agenda has progressed. And to help the discussions, the OECD conducted a survey earlier this year to see how far the aid effectiveness principles had been applied. 'The results are sobering', says the OECD. Only one of the 13 targets set for 2010 had been met. 

Like any 'could do better' report, there is the encouraging add-on that 'considerable progress has been made towards many of the remaining 12 targets'. But when you dig a little deeper, it's the donors who are still dragging the chain even on that first relatively focused and straightforward commitment made way back in Rome — to work better together. According to the 2011 survey, aid is becoming more fragmented, and little progress has been made among donors to have common arrangements.

It's also sobering to recall that the aid effectiveness agenda was first conceived by the then exclusive aid donors club — the OECD's Development Assistance Committee. With just 23 government members, it shouldn't have been so difficult to achieve what is the fundamental ingredient for any successful operation —  working as a team. Now that club isn't so exclusive anymore. Busan will have 2000 participants, a stark contrast to Rome. 

Importantly, Busan will welcome donors who in 2003 were still recipients. It will also welcome another 'class' of donor, private foundations such as the Gates Foundation. Together, these so-called emerging or new donors represent new ways of doing aid and development. Unfortunately, not all of them want to adopt the same way.

For Australia, one of the few government donors sticking by its aid budget commitments, the challenge will be to come away from Busan with a result that strips away the unwieldy and verbose complexity now characteristic of the process and one that just might lead to the desired outcome – better aid and good development results.

Photo by Flickr user Images_of_Money.

But the real elephant in the room was the dilemma to be faced by Australian NGOs if the bipartisan promise for Australia's official aid program to reach 0.5% by 2015/2016 isn't met. The proportion of government money within the total pool of NGO resources has been relatively small – just over 16% in 2009. But in the last two years, AusAID's budget for NGOs has doubled to $100 million. And an additional $244 million for NGOs and voluntary organisations has been promised over the next four years.

As the reliance escalates, so does the dependence. But that dependence will be based, not on a promise, but on an annual budget cycle with a non-negotiable end date of June 30.

So the expectation by two panelists that the 0.5% promise would be dropped by both sides of government well before the 2015/2016 deadline sent a shiver across the room. The country's domestic spending priorities will impose their influence on Cabinet decision-making sooner than later – no matter which side of politics is in power.

Our message was not one of criticism but a reminder to the NGO community that ultimately, Australia's aid budget always reflected domestic priorities. To borrow Bill Clinton's line, it's about the economy, stupid.

Photo by Flickr user Nevalenx.