Overseas aid ‘seen as luxury’

Press, 4 December 1978, Page 24

Overseas aid ‘seen as luxury’

PA Wellington The Government’s policies towards developing countries in the Pacific and elsewhere have been “more negative than positive,” says a report of the Overseas Development Committee. The committee, based in Wellington, is an association of organisations, many of them church bodies, and individuals interested in overseas development, aid and trade. The report Of the corns mittee’s chairman (Dr Patricia Burns) notes that it is written “at the end of one Administration and close to the commencement of another.” “The last three years have been more negative than positive in the area of international development, under a Government which seemed to share a belief common in New Zealand — that wholehearted support for development is more of a luxury than a necessity,” Zealand was suffering an Dr Bums says. "At a time when New economic recession and the unfamiliar experience of widespread unemployment, we believe that it was in our best interests to have acted as if New Zealand were indeed part of a Pacific neighbourhood. “We depend on poorer nations for most of our raw materials and hope that they will provide us

with new markets, but in return we have been importing less, cutting immigration, and reducing aid. “We would have liked a more far-sighted and gen* erous vision of New Zealand’s place in the Pacific and the world.” Dr Burns says that, on the positive side, the Government has shown real support for the South Pacific Forum, and has made special provisions for the import of some manufactured goods and handicrafts. But the Pacific Islands industrial development scheme, “which was to have been the answer to New Zealand’s severe cutbacks in immigration from the Pacific,” had been disappointingly slow in getting off the ground. Dr Burns praised the “excellent” voluntary agency support scheme, which channelled more than $lOO,OOO through vol* untary agencies, and said the O.D.C. would like to see a bigger proportion erf the aid vote used in this way. "We would also, of course, like to see the aid vote return to the level attained under the previous Labour Administration. “Although the amount of money has not decreased, and this year saw has caused a considerable a small increase, inflation decline in terms of proportion of gross national product,” she said.