E&OE
30 January 2009
Interview with Fran Kelly, Radio National
Subjects: Relationship with Africa, aid for Gaza, aid funds for family planning organisations
FRAN KELLY: The Twelfth African Union Summit, that's the main Economic and Security Forum for Africa, is currently underway in Addis Ababa, and for the first time, an Australian Foreign Minister is attending.
The official theme is infrastructure development, but perhaps not surprisingly, the world financial crisis has also made it onto the agenda.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has just addressed the summit assembly, and he's also been looking at Australian aid projects there in Africa, and also the problems of hunger and food aid, in Africa. He joins us this morning from Addis Ababa. Minister, thanks for joining us.
STEPHEN SMITH: A pleasure, Fran, good morning.
KELLY: What did you tell the African Union member countries, when you addressed them earlier today?
SMITH: Well, I said to them that I thought that in the past, Australia had neglected the continent of Africa, that Australia needed to enhance its engagement with Africa, both constituent nations and the continent itself, that there were a lot of opportunities between Africa and Australia, starting with economic, from Australia's perspective, the continent is 900 million to a billion, nearly a billion people, that's a market we can't ignore. I think there is a substantial under appreciation of the economic links, particularly in minerals and petroleum resources and that can only expand and grow.
Also we think there's a lot that Australia can do both from an economic point of view, a capacity-building point of view, and development assistance point of view, in areas where we've got great comparative advantage or expertise: agriculture, water and water sanitation, child and maternal health, infrastructure. So there's a raft of attributes that we have, which we think can advance our interests, but also advance Africa's interests.
KELLY: So we can help them, and they can help us? It's been suggested that this visit is motivated in part by Australia's desire to get a seat at the UN Security Council in 2013, that to do that, we would need the support of the 53 African nations. Is that part of your agenda there?
SMITH: Well, whether we were running for the Security Council or not, my policy view would be exactly the same. As a nation-state, and this is not said in any politically pejorative way, as a national state, in my view, we have substantially ignored an entire continent.
Historically we've had good links with South Africa itself, and Rhodesia first, and then Zimbabwe, and a number of other nations, but we haven't embraced the entire continent, and it's also true today, that the people-to-people contact, and the economic contacts, have gotten well ahead of the government-to-government contacts.
We've got, for example, a quarter of a million people in Australia who are African-born Australian citizens, we see on an annual basis now, about 15,000 Africans migrate to Australia, in a range of categories, from humanitarian to skills, we've got nearly 9,000 to 10,000 African students studying in Australia, and one of the proposals we put forward is to substantially increase, by 10-fold, our scholarships arrangement with Africa, to get more students here.
So all of these things are occurring, and irrespective of whether we're running a campaign for the Security Council or not, it just makes economic, strategic and foreign policy sense to enhance our engagements, and if we don't in future years we would be seen to be continuing to be very neglectful of the continent, and its people.
KELLY: Minister, I know that while you've been there, you've also visited the World Food Program development site in Ethiopia, which has been frighteningly short of funds, terrible strife people are in over there, but overnight, while you've been in Addis Ababa, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has launched an emergency appeal for the people of Gaza, $A900 million he's calling for, primarily from foreign governments.
Earlier this morning, we spoke to John Ging, he's the Director of the UN Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza city, I'll just play you a little bit of that.
GING: Australia is a very generous donor to UNRWA, but unfortunately now, we are appealing to the donors, good donors, to dig deeper. Why? Because this political failure has resulted in massive destruction, and we have to get the situation repaired, and back onto a track which is going to help its stability, and then we can bring peace from that. I mean Middle East peace will not be built in such desperate and destitute circumstances.
KELLY: Desperate and destitute circumstances, Minister, Australia's recently pledged an extra $5 million for Gaza, will we respond more generously again to this latest appeal?
SMITH: Well, the Secretary-General's appeal is essentially for reconstruction and rebuilding. In the course of coming to office, one of the first things we did was to double our humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian Authority, increased that to about $45 million in December of 2007, and in the course of the current conflict for humanitarian assistance, we've donated $10 million.
We will obviously look very sympathetically at the Secretary-General's appeal for reconstruction and rebuilding, and I have a lot of sympathy with the sentiments expressed by the extract we've just heard.
And I think I'll say two things. Firstly, we will make a contribution, you can be reliably assured of that. The extent of the contribution and the amount, of course we have to make judgements about that, but also see what other countries are doing, and see where we can be of most assistance, whether it's a cash contribution, or whether it's other things that we can do in terms of technical expertise.
But having made a substantial humanitarian assistance contribution, and I think Australians want us to be a good international citizen, and certainly when it came to a response to the Gaza crisis, we were one of the lead nations, we will discharge our international obligations, and make a contribution for rebuilding. The extent of that, we'll have to wait for a proper examination.
KELLY: And can I just ask you finally, another aid question, late last week, the US President, Barack Obama, overturned a ban on American aid funds going to foreign family planning organisations that offer abortions, or provide information or counselling about abortion.
Now a similar ban is in place here, it has been for more than 10 years, introduced by the Howard Government, in concert with Tasmanian Independent Senator Brian Harradine, I know you've been looking at overturning this ban, will Australia follow suit? Will Australia now break this ban?
SMITH: Well, the decision by President Obama came as no surprise, it mirrored a similar decision that President Clinton made. There's been a change of policy effectively reflecting Democrat and Republican lines, we've had this matter under very serious and careful consideration, it's of course an issue where there are strong views firmly held, and we've been giving it careful consideration, both internally, within the Parliamentary Party, but also in consultations with interested stakeholders, including NGOs in the development assistance arena.
It's still under consideration, I don't think we're too far away from making a decision, but we'll do that in our own time. We're not going to be driven by the decision that President Obama has made. As I say, it mirrors what President Clinton did eight years beforehand and it was no surprise to us, and I don't think we're too far from coming to a conclusion, and making a decision. But as I've said over the last few months, we'll do that in our own time, in our own careful way.
KELLY: Stephen Smith, thank you very much for joining us.
SMITH: Thanks, Fran, thanks very much.
KELLY: Foreign Minister Stephen Smith on the line from Addis Ababa.
[Ends]
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