Calls for greater transparency in Afghan aid expenditure
CANBERRA: Aid agencies want the Federal Government to apply much more scrutiny to Australia’s aid to Afghanistan. The parliamentary debate on the war in Afghanistan is a legacy of the Greens’ deal to support a Labor minority government. In the lead up to next week’s debate, the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) has written to all MP’s and senators calling for greater transparency and accountability of Australia’s civilian and military assistance.
Afghanistan’s combined aid budget is worth about $1.2 billion a year and the peak body for non-government aid groups says it wants to ensure that the money is being spent where it is most needed. ACFID is also calling on the Government to commit to a 10-year humanitarian and development program, as well as a Senate inquiry into Australia’s future role in the country.
The ACFID’s Marc Purcell says it is hard to know if Australia’s aid is being effective without proper evaluations. He wants closer scrutiny of military aid to boost accountability.
“Our military aid is concentrated or is going where Australia is a participant in the provincial reconstruction team, however, while we are making some positive difference in population centres there, there are concerns about the lack of transparency,” he said.
“There is not really any evaluations of military-led aid there and really if you have got good stories to tell, why hide them under, your light under a bushel.
“You should be actually sharing that, but standard operating procedure for civilian aid is actually to evaluate regularly, to do risk assessments. “It is hard to assess whether any of that has occurred with the Australian Defence Force.”
This financial year, Afghanistan will be the fourth biggest recipient of Australian aid. The United Nations ranks Afghanistan second last in its human development index of 182 countries. The peak aid body commissioned a study of Australia’s aid, highlighting Afghanistan’s rampant corruption and lack of support for the central government.
As a result, Mr Purcell is calling on the Commonwealth to disaggregate its official development assistance and report to Parliament regularly, in a bid to ensure aid is getting to those who need it most.
“The Canadians, for example, have quarterly reports to their parliamentarians on [all] government programs and expenditure and we think that is actually very important, given the lack of transparency about current Australian aid expenditure in Afghanistan,” he said.
Greens leader Bob Brown hopes the Government will follow Canada’s lead.
“If you are going to have a mature and open debate about the future of Afghanistan and our troops in Afghanistan, information is central to that and the Canadian government and parliament’s determination to properly inform itself on a quarterly basis is something we could well emulate here in Australia,” he said.
Though parliamentarians are not expected to vote on the war next week, Senator Brown says the debate is all about individual responsibility.”It is a breakthrough for this Government that this issue is now on the agenda of the Parliament. It doesn’t mean we have to determine or overrule what governments are doing,” he said.
Defence Minister Stephen Smith also thinks the debate is worthwhile. “I think it will be both informative and educative. There is, I think, both in the Parliament and outside the Parliament a misunderstanding of the mission that we have in Oruzgan province which is to train and mentor the Afghan National Army,” he said.
“Some people I think also misunderstand that somehow we are there by ourselves. We are not. We are there both in Oruzgan province and generally with 47 other nations.” Opposition Leader Tony Abbott will speak after Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Everyone else gets in line from Wednesday, and MP’s have been given 15 minutes to speak. The Government does not yet know how many will choose to have a say and therefore how long the debate will last.-SANA
Popularity: 1% [?]
Loading ...
