SPEECH
Welcome to Australia, welcome to Brisbane, and welcome to the Australian Third High-Level Symposium "Shaping a Sustainable Future – Partners in Development Cooperation".
I would like to start by acknowledging the traditional custodians of this land. I would also like to pay respect to the elders past and present of the Turrbal nation, and extend that respect to other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and elders present.
I would also like to welcome distinguished guests.
- Mr Sha Zukang (United Nations Under Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs and Secretary-General of the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development).
- Your Excellency Milos Koterec, President of the Economic and Social Council and Permanent Representative of the Slovak Republic to the United Nations.
- Ministers and other members of Parliament.
Australia is very proud to be hosting this event, coming as it does at a critical time for the global development community and all those across the globe who care about equality, fighting poverty, and creating a sustainable future.
In the lead up to Rio +20, we have to be asking ourselves the toughest questions, about our commitment to achieving sustainable development goals, the efficacy of our methods, the cohesion and effectiveness of our partnerships.
We have to work closely together to bring about sustainable solutions to mitigate poverty and inequality.
Sustainability means 'built to last' and sustainable development is the only development worth pursuing.
We need to work cooperatively to achieve social, environmental and economic sustainability.
I want to touch on three themes today. First, how we can share vision and knowledge across the world, secondly, how Australia is facing the challenge of sustainability on our continent, and thirdly, how Australia is making our aid program more effective and larger.
A Shared Vision
We all share a vision of a future where communities are healthy, educated and prosperous and are able to protect and nurture their environment.
But that vision must be coupled with unrelenting hard work, the courage to take risks, and a collaborative creativity.
We want to build a development framework that continues to foster sustainability long after all of us are gone.
And, frankly, we have never had a better opportunity, with more partners at the development table contributing a greater depth of expertise than ever before.
We all bring a different perspective to the debate, and different answers to the practical question of sustainable development - what works in what context and what doesn't, what actions have shown the best results, what mistakes have been made and where we can do better and be more effective.
There are many questions about how we can synthesise our different perspectives to best address entrenched problems, that I am sure will be debated at this conference.
For instance, how can a teaching protocol developed in Cambodia, and designed to overcome barriers to education for children from ethnic minorities, be adapted to achieve similar results in Africa or East Timor?
How can a sustainable river management system in the Mekong inform similar undertakings in China, or indeed Australia?
How can a female village magistrate training program in Papua New Guinea inform women's empowerment programs in Vanuatu or Burma?
How can the methodology of a clean water supply initiative in Indonesia be used to implement accountable, sustainable water and sanitation projects in the Caribbean or India?
And how can the international community better tailor and share their contributions, finding creative financing options to better support the delivery of effective aid across countries and sectors.
I like the example of empowering women as a driver of long-term change – as a good way to make development socially and economically sustainable.
Take a girl, provide her with nutritious food and access to basic healthcare, give her opportunities to receive an education, and later, employment opportunities.
We know that this girl is less likely to marry young. She is more likely to have her children later and indeed have fewer children and these children are more likely to be vaccinated, fed well and educated themselves.
Her family as a whole may be lifted out of poverty due this investment.
Educating millions of girls in places where this has never been the case can have huge benefits for whole communities and countries. The money we spend in Afghanistan to educate girls may be the single most transformative and sustainable aid we can provide.
Our Australian Story
The Australian story had interesting implications for a different type of development–environmentally sustainable development.
We have a huge landmass, with a diverse and unique ecosystem, vast natural resources, significant environment fragility and a small population.
Our indigenous communities managed this land, sustainably, for many thousands of years before European settlement. For two hundred years, we have faced the challenges of sustainability, and have learned, sometimes the hard way, important lessons that we can share.
Australians face many of the key environmental challenges that threaten communities around the globe.
We have faced, and continue to face, biodiversity loss due to urban incursion on habitat.
Climate change is impacting here with extended drought periods, floods, and fires.
Our proud history of agricultural production has been characterised by the need to grapple with issues like soil health and salinity.
And, as one of the driest continents on earth, we have had to learn to deal with water scarcity.
Because of this, we have had to develop the knowledge to respond to the challenges of sustainability, giving us a world-class research capacity that we can share.
With such a large landmass and small population we have also had to learn how to best deliver services to very remote communities.
We bring this knowledge to our international development activities, and we want to use this to drive our contribution to the sustainable development goals.
The Australian Government has a wide range of domestic programs and policies aimed at delivering sustainable outcomes including our own sustainable population strategy: 'Sustainable Australia–Sustainable Communities'.
This strategy is in place to ensure that future population change is compatible with economic prosperity, liveability and environmental sustainability.
It looks at all the issues around how and where we live, work and play, and what we need to do for a sustainable future.
The Measuring Sustainability program supports this strategy by delivering reliable, relevant and accessible information on environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability to decision makers and communities.
Successful sustainability projects in Australia include the Landcare Program.
Landcare engages communities at the grassroots level to make a difference through sustainable projects and activities from cleaning waterways, to soil conservation, from feral animal management to capacity building for rural women, from protecting marine diversity to developing sustainable stock management practices that protect the environment.
Australia is well-placed to work closely with other countries to tackle development.
As well as learning from our experience here, we are able to translate what we have learnt into the international context to inform the way we deliver our aid program.
Take the range of climate change mitigation and adaptation activities we are pursuing in the Pacific.
We are the biggest donor for small island states and have strong collaborative partnerships with partner governments, civil society, with NGOs and with multilateral agencies.
Over the next three years, we will work with farmers in East Timor and Indonesia to increase crop yield.
We will help improve rainwater harvesting and storage in Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu and Tuvalu.
We are working in Vietnam to rehabilitate mangrove swamps and build infrastructure to protect vulnerable communities from flooding and storm surges.
This work is underpinned by our commitment to sustainable development. These projects emphasise the need to build resilience in communities and give them skills and means to help themselves into the future.
Take another example, the 'hibah' initiative in Indonesia, where we partner with government and business to supply permanent running water to poor households.
As part of this program we release funding to the installer businesses three months after installation, following verification that the water supply is reliable.
We took this approach in order to improve accountability and promote local ownership–it has been very effective and to date thousands of households have been supplied with fresh water for the first time.
Water and sanitation programs are very important to the Australian aid program–recognised as it is as the single most effective way to improve the health of communities. We will have spent almost $1 billion by 2015 improving water and sanitation across Asia, the Pacific and Africa.
Take another example of our approach to sustainable development.
Australia's Mining for Development Initiative is providing $127.3 million over four years to assist our partners access the economic benefits of mining–while ensuring it is done in a sustainable manner. Our support will assist up to 30 partner countries ensure mining is done in an ethical way that benefits communities, up-skills locals and preserves the environment.
Aid Effectiveness
Over the last few years we have seen many donor countries stop and take a long hard look at their aid programs and whether they are in fact delivering value for money–are they actually making a difference to the lives of the people they purport to be helping?
This is what Australia has done.
You probably already know that the Australian Government commissioned the first independent review of its aid program in 15 years around 18 months ago.
The review found that we had a good aid program by world standards, but that we could do better–and so we have set out to make our aid program among the best in the world.
The Government released a new aid policy last July as a result of the findings and recommendations of the review and this policy focuses squarely on improving the lives of the world's poor.
I can tell you there has been non-stop action in AusAID ever since–the Government accepted 38 of the 39 recommendations from the review, and most of these have already been implemented. The few that remain will be implemented by the end of this year.
Let me touch on three important recommendations and the action we have taken.
First, transparency. We all know how important the concept of transparency is within the aid and development community–recipients have the right to know how we are spending money in their country and what results we are achieving, and our own taxpayers have the right to know how their money is being spent and whether it is being done effectively and wisely.
Australia now has an aid transparency charter which commits us to doing just this and if you take a look at the AusAID website you will see a growing body of information presented in clear and useable ways.
Australia was also a founding member of the International Aid Transparency Initiative and last year was just the third major donor–after the United Kingdom and the World Bank–to publish its data on the initiative's registry.
Australia takes transparency seriously.
Another review recommendation which Australia has implemented is the move to less fragmentation within the aid program.
We cannot be effective if we are trying to be all things to all people.
There is no doubt that working in too many countries and too many sectors with too many small activities can affect results and impose significant transaction costs on both AusAID and partner governments.
Central to Australia's new aid policy is program consolidation–delivering fewer, larger initiatives and so increasing our impact, easing the administrative burden all round and ultimately improving our results and ensuring our aid dollars go further.
Under the policy, AusAID has begun consolidating its aid program with fewer, but larger initiatives in less sectors.
This trend will continue over the next five years.
And another important plank delivered under the new aid policy has been the Comprehensive Aid Policy Framework.
This was launched by Foreign Minister Bob Carr last week and provides our aid recipients with indicative budget allocations for the next four years, the headline results our program is looking to achieve, and the standards we will apply to ensure efficient and effective delivery of our aid.
This framework sets an unprecedented standard for aid predictability, transparency and accountability for Australia and our development partners.
In the 2012–13 national Budget brought down last week, we saw Australia's aid budget increase by over 300 million Australian dollars.
This was achieved in a very tight fiscal environment.
The Government's decision to do this highlights the value we place on our aid program.
And the Government remains committed to continue growing the aid budget to 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income by 2016-17. From 2007 to 2015, Australia will have increased its aid budget by over 100 per cent.
Sustainable economic development forms the foundation for Australia's work to overcome poverty: improving food security, improving incomes, employment and enterprise opportunities and reducing the negative impacts of climate change and other environmental factors.
We meet here in Brisbane to further our work in development cooperation–and to redefine how we go about achieving the goals we all share–to save lives, to fight poverty, to provide opportunities for all, to proliferate sustainable economic development and bring about lasting change to the glaring inequalities of our world.
Never before have we been in possession of so much knowledge about our world, yet at times it seems we are equally at odds about how to utilise this knowledge to bring about change.
Our planet is under stress. And this in turn exacerbates the stress on humanity as a whole.
However, we can't forget that never before have we had such capacity, close global relationships and such collective will to address the challenges before us.
I look forward to the Symposium, to continue to find better ways we can work effectively together.
I encourage you to speak boldly, think clearly and find common ground. Enjoy your time in Australia. We welcome you here. We welcome the chance to contribute.
This is the chance for all of us to make sure that when our children's children look back on our time, they will say that in our time we turned the tide, that in our time we built a sustainable future.
Thank you.
ENDS