Good governance and security: The limits of Australia's new aid programme

Abstract

This article analyses the Australian Agency for International Development's (AusAID) approach to overseas development assistance (ODA) through an examination of AusAID's recent White Paper. The White Paper focuses on the nexus between poverty reduction and security in the Asia-Pacific region. We argue that the Paper's emphasis upon good governance as the key to poverty reduction and security is fundamentally flawed. This stems from the particular ideological and political conditions in which the Paper materialised. In focusing on good governance and security the Paper neglects more fundamental poverty reduction issues, while promoting policies that are difficult to implement and, when implemented, have highly problematic outcomes. This article examines the Australian-led intervention in Solomon Islands and the Australian aid programme in Indonesia as examples for the shortcomings of the approach articulated in the White Paper. We conclude by examining alternative development policies that move beyond the neo-liberal orthodoxy endorsed by AusAID.

Key words:

• AusAID
• overseas development assistance
• market-led development
• security
• governance
• development policy

Notes

¹ The Bank's Articles of Agreement prohibit it from interfering in the domestic politics of a member state. The Bank has often highlighted this when it has been asked to endorse the promotion of democracy. This said, we argue that what the Bank does is always inherently political.

² Paul Cammack (2004) has made a similar point with regard to the World Bank's work, arguing that the Bank's World Development Reports actually constitute a blueprint for the “proletarianisation of the world's poor.”

³ The term “Deputy Sheriff” has gained popularity as a way of caricaturing Australia's relation to the USA and the region, especially pertaining to issues of security, with Australia shouldering some of the regional work. It was incorrectly ascribed to Prime Minister Howard after an interview in The Bulletin, in September 1999. Then American Secretary of State Colin Powell also made reference to this term in 2002, stating that he saw Australia not as a Deputy Sheriff but as a Sheriff in its own right (see Tow, 2004).

⁴ This said, tensions have accompanied RAMSI from the very beginning.

⁵ Kemakeza himself was forced to resign from his then-Deputy Prime Minister position in 2001 as a result of the same scandal (Moore, 2004).

⁶ This is most probably an empty threat, given that Sogavare needs external assistance to keep his government afloat and there are currently no real alternatives to Australian aid.

⁷ Aside from regular contributions to Indonesia, a separate account named Australia-Indonesia Partnership for Reconstruction and Development exists to provide support to post-tsunami Aceh and Nias.

⁸ As in the RAMSI case, harmonisation between AusAID and other Australian government agencies, such as the AFP, Attorney General's Office, Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs and the Department of Defence, is also a staple of Australia's work in Indonesia.

⁹ To place this figure in the context of the sums that other donors provide, the World Bank's current Country Assistance Strategy (covering years 2004-07) stipulates that the Bank's base lending case would be between $US450 million to $US850 million. The higher figure is conditional upon reform progress and other factors being met.

¹⁰ We acknowledge that Australia's membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) would significantly hamper such efforts. However, we see AusAID's trade emphases as part of a broader project of market extension, of which the WTO is an important element. Our argument in this article is that this orthodoxy needs to be transcended.