Phantom aid never leaves our shores [Australia]

The Sydney Morning Herald ^ | May 28, 2007 | Debra Jopson

[gungadin]

MORE than $600 million of Australia's foreign aid over the past two years never went overseas but was swallowed up in the coffers of a small Federal Government agency in Pitt Street, Sydney.

This is just one example of a shift in policy under which the Government dresses up as overseas development assistance money that never leaves Australia or is used to prop up its immigration policies.

Help for refugees in Australia, payments to support the "Pacific solution", and a legal bill at the AWB inquiry are other forms of aid which make the nation appear more generous than it is, a Herald investigation has found.

Tagged in 2006 and 2007 as development assistance to Iraq, the $644 million was used by the Government to argue that the embarrassingly low portion of national income paid in foreign aid had increased. The money was to cover a 17-year-old Iraqi debt. It had been transferred from the Department of Foreign Affairs to the agency in Export House in Sydney in the early 1990s.

"It's just not real aid for real health, real primary schools, real water wells. It's just cleaning up a mess," said Ian Wishart, the national executive director of Plan Australia, one of many agencies that do not agree with counting the debt repayment as aid.

[gungadin]

Ah well, guess the thought was there.

[naturalman1975]

The SMH along with it sibling, the Melbourne Age are about the most left wing papers in Australia. It’s not surprising they would claim that the Australian government forgiving $600,000,000 of Iraqi debt, so Iraq doesn’t have to pay it back to us before they can borrow any more money is phantom aid.