Wednesday, June 28, 2006

NAURU: Australia Offers $40M In New 'Pacific Solution'

Australia has announced that it will give aud$40 million to Nauru, in return for the Pacific Island nation agreeing to accept asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat.

Under the terms of the package, made public this week, Nauru has agreed to a number of reforms, including cleaning up corruption in its administration. The Pacific country will also have to appoint an Australian police chief, open its government accounts to Australian scrutiny and repair its public service.

As a previous AusAID Director of the Nauru program I have had cause to express my thoughts on what I consider to be misuse of aid. The new package will ostensibly be linked to public sector reform.

In terms of effectiveness, previous aid to Nauru had little chance of achieving any lasting impact as it was devised in a vacuum, without adequate joint identification, design, risk management, evaluation and monitoring strategies that are part and parcel of any sensible bilateral program of assistance. Switched on AusAID officers have tried to plug the gaps and re-engineer some of the components to address the most glaring deficiencies but this aid was thoroughly compromised from the outset by Australia's motivations.

Forays into structural reform, including the provision of a senior financial manager etc, have been foisted onto the current Nauruan Government, which is reformist in nature and has the best of interests of Nauru at heart but is so hamstrung by lack of resources as to be helpless in the face of Australian imperatives.

I am out of touch with the current program, but at one stage Australia was keeping the island provisioned with water (amongst other essential services), which is in constant danger of running out. The total infrastructure of Nauru is on the point of collapse. Public servants and phosphate workers are paid irratically and late – the wages backlog is staggering. In these circumstances Australia came along and held out an offer too good to resist, the low ethics of which I found staggering as we hectored Pacific states on good governance.

To use the term ‘sustainable development’ and Australian aid to Nauru in the same breath would be to apply a verbal gymnastic that only a dishonest government could be comfortable with.

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