New Zealand’s aid budget, while not above scrutiny, should not become an easy target for government tinkering, said TEAR Fund executive director Stephen Tollestrup.
Mr Tollestrup was reacting to comments made by Foreign Minister Murray McCully that New Zealand’s aid budget payments were creating a culture of `hand outs’. The minister also suggested that the goal of poverty elimination was too wide and amounted to shoving money out of a helicopter.
Mr Tollestrup believes New Zealand aid should not be politicised and that the minister should convene a wider dialogue with development sector professionals and NGOs before coming to any decision on reintegrating NZAID within Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“While a small economy in world terms, we have an enviable international reputation for delivering smart aid and sound development strategies. It is known that Kiwi’s get things done,” he said
“NZAID has stringent criteria and accountability procedures surrounding how aid money is distributed to NGOs and how it is used by them and I can assure the minister we are not shoving `money out of helicopters’.
“Instead the New Zealand aid that I observe at the grass roots level is changing the lives of the desperately poor precisely by giving them a ‘hand-up,’ and is often delivered at some personal risk by the New Zealand development and aid workers in the field.”
While the idea of a New Zealand Inc arrangement has much to commend it, the idea of trade reaching the poorest is a myth, said Mr Tollestrup. “It does not happen and never has happened. Trickle down goes only so far down, leaving the poorest exploited and vulnerable. Trade and development are complementary not one and the same.”
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Well said Mr Tollestrup!