This is part two in a two-part series on Australia’s international humanitarian response to the pandemic. Read part one here.
Australia’s international aid efforts are being slashed as a result of the pandemic. Our troops have withdrawn from war-torn areas. Cash has been repurposed from existing aid programs, with no new funding available. Shortwave radio broadcasts have been cancelled across the Pacific.
Australia has left a hole in international humanitarian aid over the course of this pandemic. But, at the same time, China has stepped up. China has assisted our neighbours with troops, communications, and direct cash grants.
What will this mean for us further down the track?
The rise of mask diplomacy
China has taken the lead on what’s been dubbed “mask diplomacy”. This involves sharing what a country has — in China’s case, access to useful medical equipment — in return for public favour.
“It’s no surprise China is using this to increase its influence in the region,” said Melissa Conley Tyler, a research fellow at the Asia Institute of The University of Melbourne.
“It’s one reason Australia is working with our Pacific neighbours. Being there at difficult times is how you build relationships.”
China has donated more than $2.5 million to Pacific Island countries in direct cash grants and funding for medical supplies. It has drafted a free trade agreement with Fiji, and launched a large-scale international humanitarian aid campaign dispatching medical items around the world and providing places like Vanuatu with ventilators and test kits.
“China’s foreign policy, like all countries’, is to promote its national interest and get a good deal. The Pacific isn’t one of their highest priorities,” Conley Tyler said.
The Pacific might not be high on China’s list — but it is on Australia’s.
Australia’s aid budget is at the lowest level it has ever been, at just over $4 billion. Most of that goes to the Pacific, with funding cut from other regions in recent years.
When the pandemic hit, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) announced $280 million in aid — but all of this was repurposed from pre-existing programs. More than a third of that funding has already been given out to help with basic running costs in the Pacific.
Our landmark aid program, the large loan-based Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) — unveiled by a flower-laden Prime Minister Scott Morrison as he toured Tuvalu — is yet to formally announce a single project more than a year after it was created.
A DFAT spokesperson told Inq several infrastructure investments are in the final stages of negotiation.
The AIFFP doesn’t quite compare to China’s direct cash grants, executive director of Global Health Alliance Australia Misha Coleman told Inq. “This flagship program is a loan facility and it means countries accessing those loans will be going into more debt,” she said.
“If a donor government is offering overseas development aid then it will be more attractive to a lower income government than a loan facility.”
Since the emergence of the pandemic, work on a new international development policy has stalled. Sixty positions from DFAT will also be cut, with contractual workers in IT and policy roles axed. CEO of the Australian Council for International Development Marc Purcell told Inq little was being done to address the aid gap.
“Despite the prime minister’s assessment that COVID-19 will make the world poorer, more dangerous and more disorderly, there is no new, additional funding for the international development response,” he said.
“Instead, existing ODA [official development assistance] programs have been stopped or repurposed.”
What about our troops?
The Morrison government has announced a $270 billion plan to increase Australia’s defence capabilities, upping expenditure to 2% of our GDP.
In the face of the pandemic, troops around the world have been pulled back to Australia and to the main logistics base in the Middle East. Some have been redeployed nationally to assist with state border control, regional lockdowns and hotel quarantine.
Alexey Muraviev, associate professor of national security and strategic studies at Curtin University, told Inq that “some foreign militaries are being used in response to COVID-19, enforcing lockdown and providing emergency medical supplies … [but] our medical units are relatively small compared to other militaries”.
“I’m not aware that we have been providing significant assistance outside of Australia,” Muraviev said.
Medical Association for Prevention of War president Sue Wareham said this a good thing. “Using military troops for humanitarian purposes can be a slippery slope,” she said. “Quickly the boundary between what is humanitarian and what is political becomes blurred.”
While troops aren’t the answer, doing so little during the pandemic simply isn’t a solution, she said. “Humanitarian aid promotes good relationships … Australia has an interest in healthcare far from our shores.”
When the extra funding was announced, Liberal MP and former diplomat Dave Sharma called for the same amount of money to be spent on diplomacy.
Radio silence
Part of Australia’s $280 million pandemic response has involved helping Pacific nations with public information campaigns.
But this comes off the back of crucial funding cuts to the ABC which, in 2017, resulted in Radio Australia switching off its shortwave transmissions across the Pacific. In 2018, China Radio International snatched up some of the shortwave radio frequencies.
Coleman said this loss of content was a loss of opportunity.
“If we want to be informing our region in a credible way and maintaining our relationship with populations with very limited access to free and fair media, cutting shortwave capacity is the worst possible scenario,” she said.
“We want to make sure populations are getting good quality information and advice.” This has become even more crucial during the pandemic.
The Australian government did, however, find $17 million to repurpose some Australian television content including Neighbours, MasterChef and The Voice.
Why does all this matter?
Foreign aid is not a popular concept. Petitions to cease all overseas development funds following the pandemic have been submitted to parliament.
But humanitarian assistance benefits Australia’s national interest. It makes us the first choice for trade partnerships and creates a barrier of secure, friendly countries. Plus, as COVID-19 has shown, limiting disease abroad limits disease at home.
Aid contributes to a range of Australia’s interests, Conley Tyler said. “When we talk about Australia’s foreign policy goals we look at security, prosperity, and what’s contributing to global issues.
“We want to be a part of shaping a region.”
According to DFAT’s “Partnerships for Recovery” paper, one in five Australians’ jobs depend on global trade. Two-thirds of our agriculture production is exported to overseas markets.
“By providing the high-quality support that Australia is known for … we will be investing in Australia’s relationships with our region for the long-term,” the paper notes.
Unfortunately, as Conley Tyler said, “the needs in the region are dwarfing Australia’s contribution”.
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I have a cartoon on my fridge. It is by Cathy Wilcox and is cut from The Canberra Times of 16 April 2018.
It depicts Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop in a tiny Ausgov boat off a Pacific Island with the PM saying to the Islanders: “You’ll have to manage without our aid. We have corporate lifestyles to support.” On the other side of the island is a large boat called the China Express with a front end loader on the deck, a helicopter overhead and the captain saying: “Hi guys! have we got a deal for you!”
I was an AusAID volunteer in Viet Nam for almost a decade. Both PMs Rudd and Gillard saw the value of aid to our neighbours. In contrast, among the first acts of PM Abbott, after September 2013, was the closure of AusAID – and then he shut down Australia Network, an informed source of world news to many in Pacific and South-east Asian countries. The loss of goodwill alone is incalculable.
Any article on the topic of Australian aid usually attracts comments that we should look after our own people first. I guess that will be the reason that Newstart has risen so steeply over the years, especially since 2013?
An intelligent foreign policy with effective long term goals *is* an act of “looking after our own people first” [name of favorite deity here]!
Do I need to say it : that *is* just what the PRC is doing (from HK, (promoting Shenzhen as an alternative), the South China Sea AND the Pacific) for the generation that is commencing school this year. I’ve set my stopwatch because the penny WILL drop (eventually).
Not a bad first swing of the axe Amber, for a Yr12 project, and it does make for a refreshing respite from bimbos confronting (intentionally) staff at Bunnings. Your (selected) topic is actually of some significance.
PRC aid-diplomacy has been around prior to and since the end of hostilities in Sri Lanka where the PRC repaired the ports for free (although there is never a free lunch). The PRC is actively engaged in expanding the Panama Canal and repairing the refineries in Venezuela; an association huh? In fact I have yet to visit a country over the last half dozen years or so (from those in Scandinavia to Ecuador) where the presence of the PRC isn’t as obvious as hell.
The best that the Pacific Islands every got (abstracting from trashing elected parliaments in Fiji and the associated inter-racial hostility) from the USA was a snap-shot on the steps of the White House.
Your source for the exceedingly naive remark “The Pacific might not be high on China’s list” is not at all clear (Melbourne?) but it is a minority view. I commend you, and the subscribers, to the essays of Hugh White (of ANU) on this matter. Whatever the (secret) details might be as to establishing naval bases and aerodromes in the region (April 2018 in respect of Vanuatu) the most basic theorem of international relations compels one to that the matter seriously.
It is clear that we are re-establishing (if we ever lost it) and Lennie (Mice & Men) relationship with the USA. The alternatives are to establish, as you convey, our own diplomacy with the Pacific and with the PRC in terms of cooperation, research (yes that does mean Huawei) inter-trade missions and the whole shebang. Switching on Radio Australia would be a good beginning.
Australian’s have developed an ambivalent ‘chomp on the cake’ and pine for it simultaneously. This condition in conjunction with a front bench (Albo paraphrasing the Secretary of State over the weekend come to that – and hence the ALP) that is so ill-read and advised by a public service stuffed with cronies makes a mockery of such a proposal. ho hum.
I watched the man with a degree in economic geography and supposedly our dear leader, piss off our nearest neighbors and generally close off the shipping lanes to the US.
All with one petulant bad tempered heat rash laden pink skinned “Ho Hum” non co-operation on the vexed subject of climate change at the Pacific Island forum held in Tuvalu.
The Chinese flew in about half an hour after Scottie from marketing sweated and dripped his way on to the air conditioned plane with his best sidekick Sparrow Hawke by his side, possibly holding his nose.
What part of the equation of Kirabati, island nation population aprox 150,000 owns and controls one entire third of the Pacific, including vital shipping lanes and fisheries, did the man with the degree in economic geography not get??
It doesn’t cost much to guarantee a safe haven for 150,000 people facing a rising sea level and a sinking atoll renowned for their self reliance, seamanship and courage under fire.
Yes, they were all our allies during WW11, as were the Papua New Guineans, Solomon Islanders, New Caledonians, Fijians and what is now called Vanuatu formerly the New Hebrides.
I look at this government and know that we have come to the lowest common denominators, haven’t we? If the person sitting in Kirrabilli House did not know that Captain Cook didn’t circumnavigate Australia, I rest my case.
China has been very active in many countries with a particular emphasis on Belt and Road Initiative related development. Most action is not ‘no strings’ aid, but rather generous loans at fairly good rates – although they come with a lot of Chinese involvement in implementation. Most of these projects are worthwhile infrastructure development.
However there is plenty of potential for problems in this. The receiving countries are discovering that the Chinese really do expect them to deliver on the projects and to pay back the loans in time. And if they do not then they are going to have to hand over assets if they want to keep getting the Chinese loans. Countries that have over time built up a big portfolio of loans from grabbing the Chinese lifeline have discovered that it can be a very uncomfortable place to be.
An example is Pakistan which is a major participant in Belt and Road through the China Pakistan Economic Corridor and has had chronic problems delivering on project outcomes, security and other dimensions. Since 2015 thy have received US $87 billion, but only a quarter of projects are completed (or largely so). The expected economic stimulus has not appeared. They have found China not that receptive to renegotiating loans without there being offsets.
In Africa Chinese involvement is substantial and varied. However once you get away from elite views the street is starting to develop an ‘Ugly Chinese’ view to rival that of the ‘Ugly American’. A significant part of this is the use of Chinese labour and the management practices in Chinese run projects.
It is probably the inevitable role of dominant powers to be unloved, but what this all points to is that Chinese influence is not a given, just as American influence is not either.
It was Francis Galton (1822-1911) who was a British Statistician (quite eminent) and Eugenicist who wrote rational and profound letters to The Times (circa 1880s) imploring the British government to make way for the Chinese to govern Africa at no cost to the government but “as a glorious avenue of opportunity for Her Majesty’s subjects”. Approximately 140 years hence, with no intervention from the British government, such is the current situation; but, alas, without the “glorious benefits” to the current Britons.
The resources of a number of African States are on a par with those of Australia but 60 odd years of independence has had the effect of increasing inter-tribal rivalry (at all social levels) to say nothing of the corruption and appropriation of grants from various organisations; most documented.
The specific need to be undertaken case-by-case but the evidence is there. Even in South Africa the Gini coefficient has increased and, thus, so much for creating ‘equality’.
With just the right mix of talk from the PRC and avarice on the part of the government of a given African country this strategy of 21st century colonialism is working a charm. Its a bit like a fast food chain. The strategy is less about the product than about the location and the long term plan. Everything that the PRC undertakes (from HK to the South China Sea along with the Silk and Belt) is long term and prevails over the myopic electoral spans of the West.
Contrary to Peter’s assessment, I trust that it is obvious, from the perspective that I have presented, that world influence (if not hegemony) *is* a given with regard to the PRC – in the same way that USA influence came to be a ‘given’ for the last 75 years. As to which way the ‘ball will bounce’ I can’t say but we’ll know (I’ll bet anything) by 2030. In the mean time (point of the article) I (for one) suggest that Australia “pulls finger”.
Re anti-Chinese riots in Africa, there were anti-Chinese riots in Madagascar in the mid-1980s (cannot find a link but I know it to be true because I was there in 1988 and was told about them by educated Malgasy). There have been more since: https://www.straitstimes.com/world/dominance-of-chinese-firms-in-madagascar-sparks-social-backlash
The Chinese too often overreach and all it takes then is for a populist demagogue, looking at falling support, to point to them as the source of the problems.
The tendency towards clannishness, nurturing accusations of “otherness”, has caused problems for minority groups throughout history.
Assembling quotes & random anecdotes without added value is called a listicle.
Why not just reprint the handout?
Hence my comment expressing the article as a summary from an above-average Yr12 kid. Since returning to Crikey I’ve read three articles by Rundle that were not too bad. In every other case (including today) topics that have been attempted are well beyond the scope (and reading) of the reporter in question. Every so often, Rundle “over-reaches” too.
I’m inclined to suggest that the merit of Crikey resides with a few of the subscribers. As usual, citing today, Ruv caused me to “sit down and think” and not for the first time either. Speaking for myself, if I receive one challenging view per week that will do for my 0.99c per week.
I second you Erasmus. I continue to subscribe to Crikey because of the many excellent contributions in the comments section. Please keep subscribing (and commenting)!