Interview with Gary Hardgrave, Radio 4BC

Subjects: Australia Awards; foreign aid; Fiji.

Transcript, E&OE, proof only

13 May 2011

GARY HARDGRAVE: Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd joins us. And Kevin Rudd, congratulations on these new Australia Awards you're announcing tonight. Tell us all about it.

KEVIN RUDD: Well, here in Brisbane what we're doing is working on how we recognise foreign students who are studying in Australia.

What the government has done is bring together all the bits and pieces of scholarships we are providing to foreigners to study in Australia — you'll remember, Gary, how successful in years past the Colombo Plan was.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Absolutely. And the effect of it lasted for generations, I think.

KEVIN RUDD: It did. And we constantly run into ministers of the Malaysian Government, the Singaporean Government, all of whom have studied in Australia through the Colombo Plan.

That was brought in by Percy Spender as Foreign Minister, way back in Menzies' government in the early '50s. And since it ran out of puff some time, I think, in the '70s, from memory — or maybe the early '80s — we really haven't had a replacement scheme.

So what we've done in the last two or three years is pull together all the threads.

We now have a single set of scholarship awards abroad called the Australia Awards. We are now running a program which extends several thousand of these out to countries around the world. And tonight in Brisbane what I'll be doing is speaking to the first group of these students in Queensland studying at our universities here.

Good for the country; good for the individuals; good for bilateral relations, but also, you know, because they are studying at Queensland institutions, Queensland university institutions, it provides money back into our universities as well.

GARY HARDGRAVE: What sort of money are we talking into the Queensland economy?

KEVIN RUDD: Well, from these sorts of scholarships itself, we're running out, as I said about four or five thousand of these around the world.

And therefore if you are looking at the proportionality of Queensland — say that's one fifth of the country — that's about 1000 scholarships — based on the numbers there, you'd be looking at several tens of millions of dollars flowing back into the Queensland economy.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah.

KEVIN RUDD: So this is good for our universities, because, as you know, universities are under the pump at the moment because a lot of their private full fee-paying students from around the world are no longer coming because the Australian dollar is so high.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well, I don't know whether it's in your briefing notes, but I'll lay claim to extending the Endeavour Awards and that kind of program off into trade training at the time I was the minister responsible for that, and I launched some of that in places like Medan in Indonesia. I think the idea of having students come and study part of the time here in Australia is just nothing else but fantastic for Australia.

KEVIN RUDD: Yeah, it is. By the way, I've got that number for you — I just looked at my own brief here. It will inject around $40 million in the Queensland economy this year.

GARY HARDGRAVE: That's good.

KEVIN RUDD: So that's good for our universities but also, as you say, across the education sector.

You've got foreign students coming to study in Australia at university level, be they privately funded or funded through these sorts of scholarships, coming to study trades training — as you've mentioned before your own contribution for that in the past — but also some are coming to pick up English at secondary school level as well, and, again, it's fee-paying students.

So it's now our, one of our biggest service export industries. In fact, I saw the other day — I think it's past tourism: $19.1 billion in the last financial year.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Look, a lot of people don't see much point in foreign aid. I think a proper and a properly structured foreign aid program is one of the best things Australia can do to build strong partnerships. But some are saying that you have been so strong in your own personal profile within this government no one wants to upset you, so they've given an extra $2 billion in foreign aid [laughs] through the most recent budget. No one wants to upset Kevin Rudd — that's what government insiders are saying. How do you react to that?

KEVIN RUDD: Ha. [Laughs]

GARY HARDGRAVE: Was that a 'Ha' I heard? [Laughs]

KEVIN RUDD: It was. [Laughs] It's just unbelievable. You know what the internal deliberations of government are like, you know.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yeah, I remember.

KEVIN RUDD: If ever expenditure review committee process was going to be driven by, you know, who likes who, frankly, you wouldn't get anywhere.

The bottom line is the Liberals, your party, mine, committed about four years ago to increasing our overseas development assistance, our aid levels to what — to a level called 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015.

That means we take it up a bit each year. And we've been doing that with bipartisan support. The key thing is this, to make sure it's been spent effectively and in the right areas.

I think one of the good things that I can point to for example last few years is the fact that we have inoculated successfully, with vaccines, 900,000 kids across Papua New Guinea.

We are now providing an extra couple of hundred thousand school places for kids in Indonesia would otherwise possibly go off to radical Islamist institutions where they don't get a mainstream education — just a religious education — which could lead in some dangerous directions in the future.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Kevin Rudd, it's not so much that we're throwing money at countries and saying here, go spend — Australians are delivering these programs.

KEVIN RUDD: Well that's true, I mean, we have country programs with countries like Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and that's where the bulk of our investments are made.

I think if you stand back from it all Gary, and we all need to recognise this, of Australia's 20 closest neighbours, 18 are developing countries.

We have a big interest in those countries being as stable as possible because if they're not stable let me tell you it creates a real problem of security for Australia.

The other thing is this — the money that we send to developing countries helps develop their economies further, and we are currently selling some $90 billion worth of exports to those countries.

So you see — it's in our national security interests, it's in our national economic interests — as well as Australians doing the right thing in terms of people who are frankly in poverty, in starvation, and who need immediate help.

GARY HARDGRAVE: So you know it's not a matter of Penny Wong liking you or otherwise — the money's there for a reason.

KEVIN RUDD: Well we're — as I said both sides of politics have been committed to this, and by the way the figure that I mentioned before in terms of the Budget is probably about four times larger than the increase in the aid budget in the current Budget for the year 2011-12. So we're taking it a bit by bit, step by step, making sure it's used effectively - because like all your listeners I'm interested not in some warm inner glow- I'm interested in things really changing on the ground, more kids at school, in Melanesia, you know, in Papua New Guinea, in the Solomons, in Vanuatu — what I'm interested in is roads being built — I'm interested in vaccinations for kids to keep them alive.

Things that we can measure and count and then report back to the Australian people.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well Ratu Kabuabola, the Fijian Foreign Minister, is interested in one thing and that is you going out of office because he reckons that nothing is going to change in Australian Fiji relations. I hear you laughing again.

KEVIN RUDD: Well [laughs] well I'm probably not his number one pin up boy, but there you go.

Remember what's happened in Fiji is that there's been a military coup - only country in the Pacific with a military coup, a non-democratically elected government, and it's not just you know a nice coup which is a bit rough round the edges — it's a country which has destroyed freedom of the press — kicked out foreign journalists — censors things all the time - blocks radio transmissions — arrests ministers of religion — cancels meetings of church and community groups — suspends the constitution — and hasn't had an election for years and frankly is heading in the wrong direction.

But despite all that what are we doing in Australia?

We're still delivering overseas development assistance to the Fijian people and it's gone up again this year. There's no sanctions imposed on people travelling to Fiji as tourists. We don't have any broader economic sanctions as well. And so our argument is not with the Fijian people, our argument however is with a military regime which frankly has walked away from democracy.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well Kevin Rudd it's a discussion I wouldn't mind having with you. And I think we're going to try and get you in the studio, and we'll have a chat about Fiji amongst a few other things when you can do that.

Your office is just up the street.

But I know you're everywhere else in the world but Cannon Hill on most days of the week.

KEVIN RUDD: Yeah, you know, we're close by, so we'll do something in the studio and happy to take some calls – but part of the job description at the moment is in the adjective foreign.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Yes.

KEVIN RUDD: So because I'm the Foreign Minister I've actually got to travel a bit around the world. And if I had my druthers, mate, I'd be on the veranda at the back of Norman Park rather than running around the world which I've seen before.

GARY HARDGRAVE: How many passports you been through actually in recent years?

KEVIN RUDD: I wouldn't have a clue, the…

GARY HARDGRAVE: Well that's a question you can take on notice and report to us another time. Good to talk with you Kevin Rudd, thank you.

KEVIN RUDD: Thanks Gary for having me on the program.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Cheers. Kevin Rudd, the Foreign Minister.

ENDS

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