Speaker: Bad Aid: How Murray McCully is Breaking Your Aid Programme
43 Responses
First ←Older Page 1 2 Newer→ Last
-
Thanks Terence, disturbing. You're very right to emphasise that aid is not about what you have to give, it is about what is needed. The classic example is t-shirts being sent off, when there's sufficient clothing and all you're doing is putting out of business the local garment manufacture and retail industries. Similarly, seeing that NZ agricultural productivity is high, and Afghanistan agricultural productivity is low, sending over a particular technology or solution and then imposing it on a community is going to have costs - they may have to divert energy away from other more pressing concerns, or it may require capital which they don't have or would rather spend on other things. People want high-tech silver bullets, and this isn't entirely an outsider problem; the Gates Foundation has been criticised for focusing on high tech interventions and diverting aid spending away from proven simple solutions. Few people (Greg Mortensen aside) ever went wrong building schools and hospitals.
The other major problem with NZAID's new approach is that it undermeasures success. If you set up a community health team in a village, and have trained volunteers or staff teach about sanitation and communicable diseases, and install sanitation systems, then you're going to reduce the burden of disease and increase the productivity and quality of life of those villagers. At the very least you're going to see less people die. The problem is that these don't show up on the GDP figures, as either they are paid poorly and their labour is undervalued (thus, causing a small 'insignificant' increase in GDP) or they're outside the cash economy entirely (causing no measured GDP increase at all). Nevermind that they've just seen radical improvements in their lives and you're helping achieve a number of the Millenium Development Goals.
A narrowly economic growth focused program is going to concentrate economic growth areas and existing business and wealth on in the belief that a trickle down effect and rising inequality will lift all boats. The evidence to suggest that this works is, charitably, not all that great. Increased inequality frequently destroys social cohesion and increases corruption, and makes a country poorer. I'm not saying that this will happen - it could be that helping a plantation export more means more jobs and greater weath in the community - but it needs to be considered. Unfortunately, this experiment is occurring without any consideration of 'pointy headed desk-jockeys'.
-
Sacha, in reply to
the belief that a trickle down effect and rising inequality will lift all boats
That has been the core idoelogy of McCully and his fellow travellers for decades - and NZ's dramatic inequality is probably seen by them as a measure of success. All evidence challenging that belief will be ignored by these dolts.
-
What's that falling out of the sky? Why, it's just NZ's Transparency Intl rating.
-
The depressing thing is that this is basically the way McCully habitually treats positions of responsibility.
-
Why, it's just NZ's Transparency Intl rating.
That's probably safe. Transparency International's rankings aren't based on any hard science, but rely on asking businessmen how corrupt they think a country is. It's almost axiomatic that the style of friends and favours corruption practiced in New Zealand isn't seen as such.
-
Lucy Stewart, in reply to
You're very right to emphasise that aid is not about what you have to give, it is about what is needed.
And that's probably why it's all gone so terribly downhill; the idea that foreign aid should be done for the benefit of the recipient countries, because we are so much wealthier, because improving their standard of living helps everyone, because it's the right thing to do - that idea is pretty foreign to the National/ACT concept of, well, everything. They probably think of it as some sort of brand-improvement exercise.
Which is odd, because right-wing governments tend to be very big on domestic charity as a replacement for governance - c.f. the "Big Society" the Tory/LibDem coalition are pushing in Britain. You'd think foreign aid would fit into that model, richer countries helping poorer countries Because It's Right, not because some evil overlord-ish world body makes them. But I suppose the other problem is that they mistake GDP for real measures of improvement, which, as you explain so clearly, is not the case.
-
Andrew E, in reply to
Just what I was about to say. NZ's Transparency International rating comes from the 'Corruption Perceptions Index', not from asking ordinary people about their experience with bribery and corruption.
-
Thanks for this, Terence. What I find particularly depressing is the fact that the media have almost entirely ignored McCully's destruction of our aid programme. When the former Director of NZAID (an ex-diplomat, and not one to speak out in such strong terms without very good cause) writes a column severely criticising McCully's changes to the aid programme, you would think that this would make the news, wouldn't you? But in fact it hardly caused a ripple. Something to cover in Media 7 perhaps, Russell?
-
Unfortunately, as the last two and a half years have shown, Murray McCully clearly doesn’t know anything about aid.
So that’s goes on the list of things Murray knows nothing about. Boy am I getting tired of all these nervous nellies who have travelled the safe path risen to positions of power and influence and seem capable of SFA. I bet they cant even change a tyre without help.
Right from the moment he inherited it as part of the Foreign Affairs portfolio he’s set about pulling the old aid programme apart, intent, it seems, on rebuilding it in his own image.
Im trying to imagine that. Self-serving timorous, boot-licking toady with a propensity to kiss up and kick down. But maybe in person he’s a luverly chap.
-
One thing I can’t understand is how McCully is proposing to measure the efficacy of NZ’s spending against those broad aggregate measures he suggested when it will be swamped by donations from other countries. NZ’s spending (US$3.6m) is less than 10% of all Development Assistance Committee and UN spending (~US $50m), which doesn’t even include China – who has apparently pledged over three times as much (US$160m) as all other spending combined, although good information is apparently hard to come by.
In light of this, does McCully actually have any way of doing what he proposes? Any economists out there?
hhttp://www.theage.com.au/opinion/chinas-support-of-fiji-does-little-for-fijians-20080821-3zk8.html
-
Sue,
oh i knew the aid situation was bad but not this bad. In the new way of delivering aid there seems to be two words missing - compassion and understanding.
-
Matthew Reid, in reply to
Why, it's just NZ's Transparency Intl rating.
That's probably safe. Transparency International's rankings aren't based on any hard science, but rely on asking businessmen how corrupt they think a country is. It's almost axiomatic that the style of friends and favours corruption practiced in New Zealand isn't seen as such.Whereas NZ ranking on the Commitment to Development Index by the Center for Global Development may very well be at risk, although NZ hasn't performed all that well for the Aid component of the index anyway.
-
Thanks everyone for your comments. On recent form that power will likely go off here shortly, taking with it my internet access, but a couple of quick points.
Nik Pak,
You're absolutely correct, some of the Minister's desired indicators of aid success are liable to be completely unreliable once one takes into account issues of attribution. It's not just other country's aid (NZ's total contribution to global aid is much less than 10% btw) but also the impact of domestic political changes, fluctuations in the global economy, trade deals and so one, which are all out of our hands.
Ewan,
I agree about media coverage. The perennial challenge with aid is that it's complicated and that it takes place overseas, mostly out of sight. (And everyone - please do read the Peter Adams Op-Ed that Ewan links to.)
Matthew Reid,
The trouble with the Commitment to Development, QUODA (another CDG index) and similar indices is that much that matters with aid doesn't get captured within them. So, in the case of boomerang aid, the formal tying of aid will register but more subtle ways of using aid as a slush fund for your own businesses won't be shown at all.
George and others,
If you're interested I have a couple of posts up on ANU's Dev Policy blog looking at the relationship between growth and development more generally.
http://devpolicy.org/should-aid-focus-on-economic-development/
http://devpolicy.org/should-aid-focus-on-economic-development-part-2/cheers
Terence
-
Russell Brown, in reply to
Thanks everyone for your comments. On recent form that power will likely go off here shortly, taking with it my internet access, but a couple of quick points.
Just to explain, Terence isn't in Wellington as per his profile info, but Honiara.
-
oh - and someone's just pointed out to me a typo in paragraph 5. The last sentence should read:
"The programme wasn’t perfect but, had you inquired in 2008, you’d have struggled to find anyone who knew anything about aid who thought it needed a drastic overhaul."
-
This is an important matter, thanks for writing it up, Terence.
Why is it that so many Ministers in the current government seem allergic to expert advice or evidence? (Anne Tolley and National Standards springs immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other examples) They think that some uninformed idea they happen to randomly think up will be better than the ideas of experts in the field.
So depressing. And I sympathise with this placard.
-
...where the power is still on, at least for now.
Someone mentioned the UK Conservative party up thread, and I was going to say that it's interesting to compare what's happened to the UK's aid programme under the Conservatives with what's happened in NZ under National. My own personal politics are left leaning, and I generally think that centre-left parties are better for aid, but that being said, by most accounts, the UK Aid programme is doing reasonably well under their current minister. In the case of Australia aid got worse in the early Howard/Downer years but did then improve. And I can think of several National MPs who'd probably do an ok job with our aid programme. So some of the current mess really does seem to be about personality not politics.
-
Andrew E, in reply to
Why is it that so many Ministers in the current government seem allergic to expert advice or evidence? (Anne Tolley and National Standards springs immediately to mind, but there are plenty of other examples) They think that some uninformed idea they happen to randomly think up will be better than the ideas of experts in the field.
While keeping Terence's caveat above in mind, and subject to someone intelligent coming along to point out my misconceptions and biases, I'd offer the following explanation:
'Expert knowledge' and 'professionalisation' can be seen by the ill-informed as inherently 'progressive'. Ergo, if you're against 'progressives' as a politician, you're likely to be sceptical, if not outright opposed to 'expert knowledge' and 'professionals'. It's why conservatives are so opposed to the teaching of civics and politics in schools: they don't want the poor plebs to understand how the system works.
Or as John Stuart Mill put it (according to Wikiquote):
I never meant to say that the conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.
John Stuart Mill, in a letter to the Conservative MP, John Pakington (March 1866)
-
Alternatively, you could just argue that Conservatives see aid funding as just another pot of taxpayer money to loot for lining the pockets of their friends and donors. But that would be truly cynical...
-
Sacha, in reply to
Why is it that so many Ministers in the current government seem allergic to expert advice or evidence?
Politicians of the right often see themselves as the "deciders" - it is a different model of leadership and power. Refer George Lakoff, etc.
-
3410,
Why is it that so many Ministers in the current government seem allergic to expert advice or evidence?
Politicians of the right often see themselves as the "deciders" - it is a different model of leadership and power. Refer George Lakoff, etc.
It's worse than that. The whole concept of expertise means that some opinions are more valuable than others. This undermines their ideology of the primacy of the individual, so must be resisted.
-
Thanks Terence, great summary of badness and brokenness. Can we please have part II: What can concerned citizens do to end this madness?
-
Thanks Terence, great summary of badness and brokenness. Can we please have part II: What can concerned citizens do to end this madness?
-
Put your 'x' in the right place in November?
-
andin, in reply to
This undermines their ideology of the primacy of the individual,
Of course they don't mean this to refer to all individuals equally. I believe there is inherently a pecking order, emanating in concentric circles from their earthly bodies.
Post your response…
This topic is closed.