Senator RHIANNON (New South Wales) (15:33): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Senator Bob Carr) to questions without notice I asked today relating to asylum seekers. The response from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to the question that I put about whether aid money will be used in any way for the detention centres that are earmarked for Manus Island and Nauru certainly left open that possibility. The way his response was phrased, talking about the tangential use of the money, I did find concerning. The foreign aid budget is a very important part of our budget, and it is clearly earmarked to relieve world poverty and also very specifically to address the Millennium Development Goals. This is an area where there is so much work to be done. I believe that the majority of Australians understand that money will be used by the government in partnership with governments in low-income countries, various international finance institutions and multilateral development agencies such as the Asian Development Bank, the Food and Agricultural Organization, and many other bodies. I believe the public would expect that the money is being used directly by Australia or with such bodies to assist people. Sometimes aid projects may have a bit of a question mark over them, but that is what is set out. The foreign aid budget is about assisting people and the environment in low-income countries, and that is how that money should be spent. To divert that money to build the detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island is, I think, a betrayal of the trust of the Australian people and their understanding of how government processes work. Yes, the government has been successful because it was able to work it out with the coalition and come forward with this very damaging legislation about refugees, but to now misuse money in the aid budget really furthers the damaging aspects of the legislation that was passed a couple of weeks ago. Papua New Guinea itself is one of the countries with the highest rates of AIDS and malaria and where violence against women is extreme. Just on the past two mornings in this place we have had breakfast with people working in the aid area who are doing fine work, and what constantly comes up when you talk to them is the need for there to be greater allocation of money from the budget of a country like Australia to meeting our obligations. It was back in the 1990s, when former Prime Minister John Howard was in office, that he gave the commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, which were clearly linked to Australia reaching 0.7 per cent of GDP to be allocated to its aid budget. That still, to this day, has not been achieved. We saw that the Australian government in the most recent budget further backed off from increasing the aid allocation, so it will increase at a much slower rate than we expected. The 0.5 per cent allocation expected by 2015 now has blown out by a number of years. That money is so important to address health, education and water sanitation issues for people, particularly in developing countries in our own region. It is also important for greater female participation to assist these countries to improve their democratic processes. We are losing some of the budget—so important for those programs—to detention centres that are just so damaging to the people who attempt to escape very oppressive, difficult lives. They have a right to come to this country. Now, they are going to be forced to go to detention centres and so we are misusing our aid budget. I found the response from the minister very troubling. Question agreed to.