Condolences for people of Haiti
09/02/10 14:44 Filed in: Speeches
House motion of condolence to people of Haiti
Our heart-felt condolences go to the people of Haiti today.
Over the Christmas/ New Year holiday period, we looked on in shock and horror as this fragile and poverty stricken country crumbled in a devastating earthquake.
It seemed so unfair that one of the poorest countries in the world should fall victim to a natural disaster of this magnitude.
Port au Prince is an earthquake prone capital just like Wellington.
But we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars earthquake-proofing our civic buildings.
Haitian buildings look less stable than matchbox houses.
So why was there no solid infrastructure in Haiti?
The simple answer is that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and we are not.
The real tragedy for Haiti is that before the earthquake hit, the government of René Préval had committed itself to a huge program of development.
The international community, led by former US President Bill Clinton, had got behind Haiti.
A huge program was about to begin.
Finally, this country was on the right road for growth after years of dictatorship and corrupt government.
Then the earthquake hit.
Today, the international community - including New Zealand - must pick up that action plan again.
We must listen to the people of Haiti.
It is my heartfelt hope that the government will represent New Zealand and decide to play a role in that recovery phase, no matter how small our part.
We can help decide if Haiti will have a future of growth, or will return to abject poverty.
The decisions the international community make today really matter.
When NGOs and governments go in to build temporary housing and offer shelter to the thousands of homeless, we must make sure that these are built in areas where there is long term economic potential.
Because temporary housing has a habit of becoming permanent.
Not all the building should be in earthquake prone Port au Prince, for example.
Build shelters that can be expanded if the temporary dwellings end up being more permanent.
I would hope also that New Zealand will be a strong voice in the international community for jobs.
Because what the Haitian people need after the immediate relief effort is done, is jobs.
When the international community, NGOs and governments move in to help re-build the roads, the power stations and the buildings - use Haitian labour. Give the people jobs.
By all means, bring in the skilled labour Haiti doesn’t have – but Haiti doesn’t just need ‘doctors without borders’, it needs architects and engineers and accountants without borders.
Use the people of Haiti to build, and give them a living.
New Zealand will do much for the people of Haiti if we advocate for this approach to development right from the beginning.
This has been an unimaginable tragedy for Haiti. The re-building of this country must now be seen as an opportunity for a country and a people who deserve a better future.
Our heart-felt condolences go to the people of Haiti today.
Over the Christmas/ New Year holiday period, we looked on in shock and horror as this fragile and poverty stricken country crumbled in a devastating earthquake.
It seemed so unfair that one of the poorest countries in the world should fall victim to a natural disaster of this magnitude.
Port au Prince is an earthquake prone capital just like Wellington.
But we have spent hundreds of millions of dollars earthquake-proofing our civic buildings.
Haitian buildings look less stable than matchbox houses.
So why was there no solid infrastructure in Haiti?
The simple answer is that Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world and we are not.
The real tragedy for Haiti is that before the earthquake hit, the government of René Préval had committed itself to a huge program of development.
The international community, led by former US President Bill Clinton, had got behind Haiti.
A huge program was about to begin.
Finally, this country was on the right road for growth after years of dictatorship and corrupt government.
Then the earthquake hit.
Today, the international community - including New Zealand - must pick up that action plan again.
We must listen to the people of Haiti.
It is my heartfelt hope that the government will represent New Zealand and decide to play a role in that recovery phase, no matter how small our part.
We can help decide if Haiti will have a future of growth, or will return to abject poverty.
The decisions the international community make today really matter.
When NGOs and governments go in to build temporary housing and offer shelter to the thousands of homeless, we must make sure that these are built in areas where there is long term economic potential.
Because temporary housing has a habit of becoming permanent.
Not all the building should be in earthquake prone Port au Prince, for example.
Build shelters that can be expanded if the temporary dwellings end up being more permanent.
I would hope also that New Zealand will be a strong voice in the international community for jobs.
Because what the Haitian people need after the immediate relief effort is done, is jobs.
When the international community, NGOs and governments move in to help re-build the roads, the power stations and the buildings - use Haitian labour. Give the people jobs.
By all means, bring in the skilled labour Haiti doesn’t have – but Haiti doesn’t just need ‘doctors without borders’, it needs architects and engineers and accountants without borders.
Use the people of Haiti to build, and give them a living.
New Zealand will do much for the people of Haiti if we advocate for this approach to development right from the beginning.
This has been an unimaginable tragedy for Haiti. The re-building of this country must now be seen as an opportunity for a country and a people who deserve a better future.
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A generation of kids will be lost - NZ must do more
29/10/09 17:30 Filed in: News Releases
16,000 children are dying from hunger every day because food aid is now at its lowest level in twenty years, but the National government remains determined not to use our aid for ‘poverty reduction,” says Progressive leader and MP Jim Anderton.
The head of the United Nation’s World Food Programme recently announced that tens of millions of the world’s poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because some OECD countries have slashed aid after the financial crisis.
Jim Anderton was talking at the launch of the Mutima Project in Christchurch tonight.
The Mutima project is a volunteer organisation and will send a team of cardiac surgeons to Zambia to perform life-saving heart surgery on young adults.
“I commend them for the strength of their personal commitment and their determination to serve. We are a stronger and more caring community because of people like these Christchurch surgeons. Because of them, a hundred young Zambians will have a second chance at life.”
About 60% of the Zambian population are living on less than a $1 per day.
“But where is the urgency from the National government to save a generation of children who will die from starvation if the world does nothing?”
The National government has recently announced that it will abolish the goal of ‘poverty reduction’ for our aid, and replace it with a goal of ‘economic development’.
“I am a strong champion of economic development - I used to be Minister of Economic Development. But you can’t do much business development if people don’t have enough to eat or clean water to drink.”
“I also want to see the National government do more about bad governance and corruption in some of the poorest countries.”
“I want to see New Zealand get behind a new international Natural Resource Charter which sets out ‘best practice’ in countries with natural resources like oil (or copper in Zambia), so proceeds of those resources go to the poorest people and don’t end up in the pockets of the corrupt,” says Jim Anderton.
The head of the United Nation’s World Food Programme recently announced that tens of millions of the world’s poor will have their food rations cut or cancelled in the next few weeks because some OECD countries have slashed aid after the financial crisis.
Jim Anderton was talking at the launch of the Mutima Project in Christchurch tonight.
The Mutima project is a volunteer organisation and will send a team of cardiac surgeons to Zambia to perform life-saving heart surgery on young adults.
“I commend them for the strength of their personal commitment and their determination to serve. We are a stronger and more caring community because of people like these Christchurch surgeons. Because of them, a hundred young Zambians will have a second chance at life.”
About 60% of the Zambian population are living on less than a $1 per day.
“But where is the urgency from the National government to save a generation of children who will die from starvation if the world does nothing?”
The National government has recently announced that it will abolish the goal of ‘poverty reduction’ for our aid, and replace it with a goal of ‘economic development’.
“I am a strong champion of economic development - I used to be Minister of Economic Development. But you can’t do much business development if people don’t have enough to eat or clean water to drink.”
“I also want to see the National government do more about bad governance and corruption in some of the poorest countries.”
“I want to see New Zealand get behind a new international Natural Resource Charter which sets out ‘best practice’ in countries with natural resources like oil (or copper in Zambia), so proceeds of those resources go to the poorest people and don’t end up in the pockets of the corrupt,” says Jim Anderton.
McCully to return to pork barrel NZAid
04/03/09 13:22 Filed in: News Releases
Deputy leader of the Progressive Party Matt Robson and the Minister in 2002 who with Phil Goff set up NZAID slammed Foreign Minister McCully’ s proposal for aid to be part of "NZInc" and for NZAID to be "folded back into MFAT".
"He should just set up a Department of Bribes and be done with it said Matt Robson.
"Being part of MFAT was exactly the problem with NZ development aid before we separated it out into a specialist division."
"It was staffed by junior diplomats on their way up or older diplomats on their way out. There was no specialist department. The programmes were in a muddle. We gave aid to two super military powers- China and India. Why? To peddle influence in their capitals not to help the poorest people. It is to that obscene policy that McCully is obviously attracted.
"Phil Goff as Foreign Minister and I as the Minister responsible for Aid deliberately separated out development aid from Foreign Affairs as it was largely being used as a fund used for New Zealand’s foreign policy aims not to help the development, in a systematic way, of the world’s poorest policy.
"Under National aid money was used by Foreign Affairs to win the support and votes of tyrants like Suharto of Indonesia and the King of Tonga. It was used to give retirement jobs like the head of the Commonwealth to ex National MPs like Don McKinnon.
"NZ Aid was a progressive step for NZ ," concluded Matt Robson.
"He should just set up a Department of Bribes and be done with it said Matt Robson.
"Being part of MFAT was exactly the problem with NZ development aid before we separated it out into a specialist division."
"It was staffed by junior diplomats on their way up or older diplomats on their way out. There was no specialist department. The programmes were in a muddle. We gave aid to two super military powers- China and India. Why? To peddle influence in their capitals not to help the poorest people. It is to that obscene policy that McCully is obviously attracted.
"Phil Goff as Foreign Minister and I as the Minister responsible for Aid deliberately separated out development aid from Foreign Affairs as it was largely being used as a fund used for New Zealand’s foreign policy aims not to help the development, in a systematic way, of the world’s poorest policy.
"Under National aid money was used by Foreign Affairs to win the support and votes of tyrants like Suharto of Indonesia and the King of Tonga. It was used to give retirement jobs like the head of the Commonwealth to ex National MPs like Don McKinnon.
"NZ Aid was a progressive step for NZ ," concluded Matt Robson.
The future of New Zealand’s overseas development aid
27/03/09 13:03 Filed in: Speeches
Remarks at the summit on the future of New Zealand’s overseas development aid
Loaves and Fishes cafe, Wellington.
10.25AM Friday, 27 March 2009.
Progressives have a special interest in this issue.
My colleague Matt Robson, the Progressives deputy leader, was the aid minister responsible for setting up NZ Aid.
I want to talk to you about why poverty should be the focus of our aid and development efforts.
And I particularly want to address the suggestion that we should switch our focus from poverty to economic development.
I used to be minister of economic development. So I have some insight into what is involved in an economic development programme.
Economic development is not something you can impose from the top.
You don’t go into a region, or into an entire country, and say: ‘this is how you are going to develop your economy.’
It doesn’t work. It never works.
I’ve listened to comments saying we should make our aid efforts benefit New Zealand companies.
This is profoundly wrong.
We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens.
New Zealanders have always been good international citizens, prepared to shoulder our burden in the world. More New Zealanders have died in overseas wars as a proportion of our population than nearly any other country because we are always prepared to do more than our bit.
Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy.
We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world.
But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.
The last government allowed tariff free access to products from least developed countries as far back as 2002.
I was bitterly attacked from the left for that. The Greens and a number of trade union leaders were strongly against it.
But the truth is - the proportion of imports from least developed countries hasn’t changed since then.
We haven’t been swamped by imports as critics claimed we would.
It also hasn’t been the pathway to prosperity for the poor countries, as some advocates claimed it would be.
You have to do much more.
We have to focus on much more than economic development or even aid itself.
If you focus only on economic development then in a country like the Solomons you would try to aid more value from the trees being extracted there. But there is much more to do than that.
We are talking about countries where a total billion people live in conditions we associate with the fourteenth century deprivation.
Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption.
More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks.
If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets.
A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does,
A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery.
Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military, where communities are at constant risk of attack and where the spoils of victory are distributed to one side or the other.
Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.
In the last year, trillions of dollars of wealth has been destroyed all over the world as financial markets collapse.
Governments everywhere acknowledge this economic crisis and they are scrambling to make an urgent and drastic response.
Why aren’t the billion people living in poverty an urgent global crisis too?
We could have fixed their problem forever for a fraction of the amount lost in the global financial crisis.
The entire annual aid budget of the world is less than the amount lost by some of those failed merchant banks and gigantic corporations alone.
We have the means to end global poverty.
What we lack is not the means, but the will.
NZAid embodies our will to reduce global poverty.
Smashing NZAid, setting the clock back to the past, is a hugely backward step and it interferes with our ability to fight poverty.
It is a mistake, the National government should not go down that road and we should not allow them to do so.
Loaves and Fishes cafe, Wellington.
10.25AM Friday, 27 March 2009.
Progressives have a special interest in this issue.
My colleague Matt Robson, the Progressives deputy leader, was the aid minister responsible for setting up NZ Aid.
I want to talk to you about why poverty should be the focus of our aid and development efforts.
And I particularly want to address the suggestion that we should switch our focus from poverty to economic development.
I used to be minister of economic development. So I have some insight into what is involved in an economic development programme.
Economic development is not something you can impose from the top.
You don’t go into a region, or into an entire country, and say: ‘this is how you are going to develop your economy.’
It doesn’t work. It never works.
I’ve listened to comments saying we should make our aid efforts benefit New Zealand companies.
This is profoundly wrong.
We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens.
New Zealanders have always been good international citizens, prepared to shoulder our burden in the world. More New Zealanders have died in overseas wars as a proportion of our population than nearly any other country because we are always prepared to do more than our bit.
Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy.
We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world.
But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.
The last government allowed tariff free access to products from least developed countries as far back as 2002.
I was bitterly attacked from the left for that. The Greens and a number of trade union leaders were strongly against it.
But the truth is - the proportion of imports from least developed countries hasn’t changed since then.
We haven’t been swamped by imports as critics claimed we would.
It also hasn’t been the pathway to prosperity for the poor countries, as some advocates claimed it would be.
You have to do much more.
We have to focus on much more than economic development or even aid itself.
If you focus only on economic development then in a country like the Solomons you would try to aid more value from the trees being extracted there. But there is much more to do than that.
We are talking about countries where a total billion people live in conditions we associate with the fourteenth century deprivation.
Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption.
More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks.
If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets.
A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does,
A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery.
Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military, where communities are at constant risk of attack and where the spoils of victory are distributed to one side or the other.
Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.
In the last year, trillions of dollars of wealth has been destroyed all over the world as financial markets collapse.
Governments everywhere acknowledge this economic crisis and they are scrambling to make an urgent and drastic response.
Why aren’t the billion people living in poverty an urgent global crisis too?
We could have fixed their problem forever for a fraction of the amount lost in the global financial crisis.
The entire annual aid budget of the world is less than the amount lost by some of those failed merchant banks and gigantic corporations alone.
We have the means to end global poverty.
What we lack is not the means, but the will.
NZAid embodies our will to reduce global poverty.
Smashing NZAid, setting the clock back to the past, is a hugely backward step and it interferes with our ability to fight poverty.
It is a mistake, the National government should not go down that road and we should not allow them to do so.
Focus aid on poverty elimination
27/03/09 13:00 Filed in: News Releases
A focus on economic development rather than poverty elimination will mean we don’t focus on some critical problems affecting the world’s poorest countries, Progressive leader Jim Anderton told a summit on the future of New Zealand aid today.
Jim Anderton is a former economic development minister, and Progressive party deputy leader Matt Robson set up NZAid when he was overseas development minister.
“The poorest billion people in the world live in conditions we associate with fourteenth century deprivation. Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption,” Jim Anderton says.
“More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks. If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets. A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does.
“A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery. Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military. Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.”
Jim Anderton says it is profoundly wrong to make assistance to New Zealand companies the focus of our aid effort.
“We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens. Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy. We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
“We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world. But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.”
Jim Anderton is a former economic development minister, and Progressive party deputy leader Matt Robson set up NZAid when he was overseas development minister.
“The poorest billion people in the world live in conditions we associate with fourteenth century deprivation. Bringing them out of poverty requires a focus on good government, on transparency and ending corruption,” Jim Anderton says.
“More money is stolen from Africa every year by corrupt governments than the world gives the entire continent in aid. It gets stolen and put in western banks. If we simply stopped Western banks from being used to hold the stolen proceeds of looting in Africa by corrupt political leaders, it would have the same effect as the overnight doubling of aid budgets. A focus on economic development doesn’t even look at this issue - a focus on poverty does.
“A focus on poverty requires a focus on post-conflict recovery. Not much is going to be done about poverty in a country ruined by civil war, where any money that comes in gets spent on strengthening the military. Focusing on these issues is crucial - but you cannot do a good job of that if you focus on economic development alone.”
Jim Anderton says it is profoundly wrong to make assistance to New Zealand companies the focus of our aid effort.
“We don’t give aid to benefit New Zealand companies. We do it because we are good global citizens. Trying to sell more of our exports to the poorest countries is not much of an economic strategy. We are not going to develop export markets for New Zealand by focusing on how much we can sell to the poorest people in the world.
“We should certainly be open to trade with the least developed countries of the world. But trade reform alone, while necessary, is not sufficient.”