Comments

Cy Nic - yes that is a very cynical view, and actually very far removed from the reality the majority of the time. In my experience many Peace Corps volunteers view their placements as little more than a chance to "hang out" and have a cultural experience, because their pay and program does not treat them as professionals. AVI volunteers however value their opportunity and feel respected by having a proper living allowance and a respected position in their host organisations. I must say that I found the Austraining response very "nothing"... just the usual PR spin. High staff turn over in country indicates that there are systemic issues that need to be addressed, generally! And why on earth would Austraining be offering "pastoral support" to volunteers? It is not supposed to be a religious program! In my experience both as a volunteer and as CEO of an organisation in which a number of volunteers are placed, the experience of feeling under-utilised due to organisational resistance and role confusion is very common - and not necessarily entirely preventable. The support needs of volunteers however do need to be much more thoroughly addressed, and better preparation would certainly help. It has seemed to me that volunteers are largely expected to carve out their own positions in an organisation and the ICMs only get involved if all else has failed - and sometimes too late. This was never the case for me but it was for a number of my peers. Volunteers need to be seen as a privilege and a massively valuable opportunity that an organisation must make the most of... and one of the systemic issues which could be addressed is the pressure to avoid "early leavers" from AusAID's side as this undermines the program's capacity to address issues effectively.

Hi Chris, Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure I understand your first measure. Aid is a very small % of government spending and so, effectively contributing factor to any debt which a country might possess, so I don't quite see how debt could be used as a measure of aid generosity. On GDP per capita -- after a very quick preliminary think about it I think I get your point. For example (using GNI/Capita which is very close to GDP/Capita) for simplicity's sake. If we imagine two countries (A and B) with the same GNI but one (A) which has twice as many people as the other (B). B is in fact a much poorer country than A, but if they gave the same amount of aid their aid/GNI ratio would be the same. Which seems unfair as B is sacrificing more than A. On one hand this isn't perhaps a huge issue as the OECD DAC is made up of countries that are all pretty wealthy on a GNI/Capita measure. However there is some variation between the most and least wealthy, and what you are suggesting would be a measure of generosity that better takes this into account (I think). Note that as Australia is one of the wealthier OECD countries (by GNI/Capita) on your suggested measure it would come out looking somewhat worse than it does on a pure per GNI measure. Thanks again Terence

The genius of the Australian Government's AVID program is that it pays, I mean provides a living allowance to, volunteers that is just enough to keep the volunteers happy and/or in alcohol for the length of their assignment. Reduce the payment to a Peace Corps-style subsistence allowance, and I reckon nine out of ten volunteers would decide they were wasting their time chasing the white unicorn of capacity development and leave early.

A bit more perspective, from P542 of the Latest Issue of Perspectives on Politics: "By mid-2010, the US Agency for International Development alone was spending $340 million on Afghan reconstruction per month, often on questionable projects..."

Hello Angus, Thank you for your interesting blog. I was just hoping to hear what your (and others) thoughts were about including the following in the ODA generousity measure: 1) Government Debt as a percentage of GDP - higher government debt would imply greater generousity 2) GDP per capita - lower GDP per person would imply greater generousity There is a great deal of variation among OECD countries across these indicators. If they were factored in, how would Australia compare in terms of generousity?

Thanks Garth. That is very interesting information (and also true of other countries if my memory serves me well). For the record, I definitely agree with you and Angus on the merits of ODA over total govt spend as a means of communicating aid share with the public.

I agree, Stephen, with your concerns about unpredictable aid levels having a major impact on aid quality and effectiveness. It can make planning very difficult for receiving countries, can harm coordination with other donors and must be a nightmare for AusAID having to change its comprehensive 4 year plan months after its release. If government is serious about maximising the effectiveness of aid it must provide long term predictability in aid funding and utilise its skilled AusAID staff to plan and implement expanded programs, not rewrite plans and juggle funds. I don't however think that it follows that the increases need to be of similar size each year or that an annual increase of 0.05% of GNI is unmanageable. AusAID already has plans to accommodate that scale of increase. In addition, underfunded but treatable, health needs (such as HIV, malaria,TB) alone could very effectively use any additional funding that Australia could offer to the Global Fund and other effective multilateral agencies. And then there is expanded health worker training and recruitment needed to improve child and maternal health ... There is no shortage of needs, nor of effective mechanisms (including AusAID) to help meet these needs - the limitation is adequate, predictable, long-term funding.

Thanks Garth. I take your point on the chart title - something to bear in mind for future summaries.

Thanks Angus for starting this interesting discussion. While I agree with Terence's arguments about the better comparability of the ODA/GNI ratio I do think that the ODA/federal budget ratio can have more meaning for the public, and in some ways, for MPs. For this reason World Vision and other groups have often included questions in opinion polls about what share of the federal budget the respondent thinks is currently spent on aid and what share they think should be spent on aid. Every survey I have read has the following outcome: - most people think that a greater share of the budget is spent on aid than actually is, and - most people suggest a share that is higher than the current 1.4% of budget expenditure. I think the 2011 <a href="http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/2011-lowy-institute-poll" rel="nofollow">Lowy Poll</a> was the most recent Australian opinion survey to cover this. It found that the average estimate of current ODA/gov expenditure was 16%, while the average suggested share was 12%. Australian NGOs campaigning for greater aid regularly highlight the very small share of the budget that goes to aid, but we tend to focus on the ODA/GNI target as we do not want to confuse people with different measures.

Hi Angus, Thank you for an interesting comment. When giving talks on New Zealand aid I have in the past used ODA/government spending figures myself (or ODA/government revenue). I agree this is much more meaningful to the public, allowing you to say something (at least for revenue) along the lines of "Out of every hundred dollars you pay in taxes one dollar goes to aid", or something similar. However, the measure has two limitations. 1. For international comparisons, countries making the same aid effort, may end up with different results simply because of the government structure they have. For example, the figure in your chart is, I presume aid spend/*federal* Australian government spend. But in New Zealand where we don't have a state government system the only number we can really use is aid spend/total government spend, which leads to a lower ratio (that and the fact that we give less aid). This isn't an insurmountable problem, but would need to be carefully considered in cross country analysis. 2. Countries can always fund aid increases through raising taxes. Indeed, rather than take the money from social services as home, this is how I would prefer my government did do this. However, your measure gives countries no credit to countries that fund more aid by having higher taxes and higher total govt spending. The US would appear considerably better on your measure vis a vis Sweden than it does on the old ODA/GNI ratio. Which is unfair, I think -- the Swedes sacrifice more of their wealth for ODA than the Americans and should be given credit for this sacrifice. That they have a more sensible social model too hardly seems something we should punish them for in international comparisons. Ultimately I would say that once you take into account the possibility of differing levels of taxes between states ODA/GNI remains the most meaningful metric for international comparisons. Thanks again for an interesting post. Terence

Thanks Matt for this summary of regional shares. I think perhaps the chart title should be changed to say "Total Australian country-allocated ODA by region" as of course this chart does not include the 20% of the budget going to multilaterals. While the Government likes to say that the majority of poor people live in the Asia-Pacific, 75% of the extremely poor people in the world live in Africa and South Asia. Given this, multilateral funding is generally much more focused on Africa and South Asia and thus lifts Australia's contributions to these poorer areas. Perhaps future summaries of the regional distribution of aid could include a summary of both country-allocated aid and total Australian aid.

Thanks for the comment, Garth. It does seem that aid effectiveness receives more attention from MPs than other areas but I don't believe that is a bad thing at all. Indeed, improvements to aid effectiveness are likely to provide a strong argument for government to follow through with the projected increases in the share of ODA out of total government outlays. On your question, you are right in that downward revisions to revenue are also a significant risk but I guess in my comment above I was focusing on the government's "most difficult task", which in my view relates to controlling total expenditure. The revenue projections are underpinned by still very high terms of trade, at least by historical levels, and a recovery in GDP growth. Company tax and MRRT revenue might bounce around a bit but on the whole the revenue story is more compelling than the expenditure side. The government has clearly worked very hard on controlling spending yet in the face of a budget blowout no net expenditure savings could be found. It wouldn't take much for a blowout in other spending areas to impact on the aid budget in future years. Of course all of this depends on who is in government so we will just have to wait and see how much support the aid budget receives post September.