ODA expenditure
pp. 4-5 · Read in the full issue
Letters
to increase
Madam I was disappointed to read Bill Morton’s negative reporting on Australia’s 1994/95 Development Co operation Budget (Aid under scrutiny, PIM, August, 1994).
Australia’s Development Co-operation Budget did not “once again decrease as a proportion of GNP”. In fact, the out come of the budget was particularly positive. Expenditure on Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 1994.95 is expected to increase byAsB2 million over last year’s expenditure, a real increase of 3.6 percent.
Morton could have noted that is the largest budget increase in both real terms and money terms for over 20 years.
Your readers may be particularly interested to know that in the South
Pacific region, an area where a number of donors are reducing their activity, Australia has increased its ODA alloca tion from A 5123.6 million to A 5133.3 million, an increase of eight percent.
This very positive outcome, in the face of continued fiscal restraint in the overall budget context, reconfirms Australia’s commitment especially in the region.
D. Rooken Smith
Development Co-operation, Australian Embassy, Suva, Fiji
For the
record
Madam, Your readers may be mystified by the
comment associated with the figures which appear appear in Akanisi Motufaga’s otherwise excellent cover age of the recent South Pacific Forum, (September PIM ).
Referring to sustainable forestry and quoting our Minister for Development Co-operation and Pacific Island Affairs, Gordon Bilney, she reports the minister as saying that part of the logging prob lem was related to regional govern ments being ripped off by logging com panies. The report goes on, quoting the minister: “The countries are simply not getting the price for the exports that they ought to. I was reading some fig ures recently that showed in the case of one country’s logs that were being sold for around $3-50 per cubic metre, were returning only $2.70 to that country.”
The figures, as reported, make the comment “ripping off” nonsensical in that context.
What the minister did say, as quoted in the Australian Embassy’s own month ly Australian-South Pacific Newsletter
was, “Some figures recently had shown in the case of one country, logs were being sold for around $330 per cubic metre with a return of only $2.70 to that country.”
These figures show clearly one of the reasons that the minister and the Australian government as a whole are so concerned about the forestry situation in the region.
John Trotter
Permanent Representative of Australia to the South Pacific, Forum Secretariat, Suva, Fiji
One Pacific
currency
Madam, With a dozen or so different curren cies in the South Pacific, it is hard for Pacific people (travellers) to keep track of the hodge-podge of their money as they skip from one nation to another.
A single currency would be an excel lent idea that would make good sense.
We would not have to change money in another country. A joint central bank would issue a single currency.
Maybe the Melanesian countries of the South Pacific may consider this idea.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group should study this idea and put it in their agenda items for their next meeting.
Overall we have similar socio-economic and political idealogies.
Over to you, the leaders of the South Pacific. How about the Year 2000?
Francis Kasau,
Waigani, Papua New Guinea.
Public right
to know
Madam, Thanks to F. Syme-Buchanan, spokesman for the Cook Islands Prime Minister, for his letter regarding my ‘Pearls” 94’ peice in the July PIM, which I stand behind, and to PIM for the chance to set the record straight. Henry is ‘a poor spokesman for the Cooks’ because ‘he failed to find a few minutes
to talk with the media’ not only during Pearls 94, but because he has a history of doing so. The July 1990 PIM ran my interview with Henry, who was inter viewed during one of his many Hawaii trips. It was favourable to Henry and I’ve been puzzled since at his reluc tance for interviews with PIM , Radio Australia, etc.
In 1991,1 spent a month at the Cooks, and found Henry to be extremely elu sive. He failed to show up at a sched uled appointment without notification, although I eventually persisted in attain ing a brief interview. In April, 1994, Henry chaired the PIDP meetings at Honolulu, and was consistently unavail able to the press, just as he was during his return trip to Hawaii for Pearls’94 in May. Syme-Buchanan asserts:‘Rampell fails to accept (Henry) is not obligated in any way to hold media interviews during two and half days in Hawaii’.
Syme-Buchanan is right., and hits the nail on the head. Politicians elected and paid by the public are accountable to the people, and as the eyes and ears of the public, the media often informs the people as to what their public servants are doing and how the people’s busi ness is conducted and their money spent.
I suspect Henry evades intrviews because he does not want to be asked embarrassing questions such as: allega tions of gun trafficking by a Cooks ship, queries raised by the PIDP meeting and public complaints about the govern ment.
Speaking of which, Peter Williams said publicly and in a private interview that his family ‘had to resort to firearms to protect their pearl farm’, although there wasn’t any shooting. It was also said in public that Manihikians had made millions from pearls, and Williams verified in an interview that his family had ‘made over a million NZ dollars annually’.
Journalists are not in popularity con tests. When leaders snub the press, they also snub the costituents and others seeking information. In a free society, a free press must report without fear or favour, and with devotion to the public’s right to know - whether or not politi cians want them to know.
Ed Rampell, Journalist, Honolulu, Hawaii,