AUSTRALIA: Inquiry endorses Pacific seasonal labour
Updated
An Australian parliamentary inquiry has called for a special investment scheme in the South Pacific and given the tick to the idea of Pacific workers doing seasonal jobs in Australia.
BAIRD: Mr Deputy Speaker, on behalf of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, I present the committee's report, entitled "Australia's Aid Program in the Pacific". I move the report be made a parliamentary paper.
DOBELL: Government Member of Parliament, Bruce Baird, presenting the study of Australia's aid program in the South Pacific, aid which is worth $870 million this financial year.
Mr Baird says Australia must look beyond aid to help the island states.
BAIRD: Australia has long had a special relationship with several Pacific countries, and historical links, especially with Papua New Guinea. It is not just the case of it being in Australia's national interest to intervene or to provide aid. Australians genuinely want to help their neighbours.
That said, government to government assistance is not always the perfect way to deliver aid. It is therefore important that there be a mixture of interventions, including those from civil society, the NGO's in the private sector.
DOBELL: A key recommendation is the need to get Australian business investing in the South Pacific.
The inquiry picked up an idea from an Australian diplomat, Roland Rich, the foundation director of Canberra's Centre for Democratic Institutions. The report endorses Mr. Rich's suggestion that Australian business could get a full tax deduction for funds invested in the South Pacific.
Mr. Baird.
BAIRD: Stimulating the private sector has not typically been the domain of aid agencies for a range of reasons and public funds are naturally directed to public sector. However, the committee heard there is much that the Australian Government, the Australian-Pacific Business Councils, the private sector and NGO's like Australian business volunteers are doing and can do more of to help promote economic reform, from working to improve the policy environment as advisers in line agencies to investing in infrastructure and human capital, and supporting entrepreneurial activities.
To these ends, the committee notes the importance of financial services and the development of Pacific Island economies, and recommends the Australian Government develop a focus strategy to encourage financial services development, including micro-finance. The Committee was impressed at the innovative idea presented to it by Mr. Roland Rich, who proposes Australian tax rules be amended to encourage companies to become directly involved in building private sector capacities in developing countries, by allowing them to deduct from the taxable income the first costs incurred in providing such assistance.
The committee recommends the Australian Tax Office in conjunction with AUSAid, considering report on merits and practicalities of Mr. Rich's proposal.
DOBELL: The other idea which is slowly making its way through the Canberra bureaucracy is to allow unskilled Pacific workers to come to Australia to do seasonal work, such as fruit picking.
The Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has moved from being an opponent of the proposal, to saying that Australia will watch closely the Pacific workers scheme introduced this year by New Zealand.
The former Opposition spokesman on the South Pacific, Labor's Bob Sercombe, says Australia must adopt a Pacific workers scheme.
SERCOMBE: This is vital for the region's development and to achieving stronger, economic integration in the region. Of course any such proposals would need to ensure that the interests of Australian workers were protected, as well as avoiding any prospect of exploitation of Pacific Island workers.
Presenter: Graeme Dobell
Speakers: Government MP Bruce Baird; Opposition Labor Party MP Bob Sercombe
