The Evangelical Alliance Relief Fund

PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday March 11

Throwing $100 notes at planes government’s new approach to aid

Subsidising Air New Zealand Pacific Island airline routes using aid money is more about ensuring shareholder returns than helping the poor, said TEAR Fund executive director Stephen Tollestrup.

The government announced that it is considering subsidising various Air New Zealand routes between Los Angeles, Samoa Tonga, the Cook Islands and Auckland using New Zealand aid money. The leaders of Tonga and Samoa had raised the issue with Prime Minister John Key at the Pacific Forum in January.

Using aid money for this purpose confuses and distorts the aims of New Zealand’s foreign aid programme, said Mr Tollestrup. “On one hand Foreign Minister Murray McCully is saying the aim of NZAID to eliminate poverty is like `shoving $100 notes out of a helicopter’ and that aid is a hand out rather than a hand up, but ironically the government sees nothing wrong with throwing $100 notes at planes and giving big business a hand out.”

Mr Tollestrup said: “The intention of the government is to stimulate the tourism industry and exports to bring benefits but the majority of those businesses are more than likely owned offshore. In effect the aid will be going to boost big business profits rather helping the poor.”

There is also a real lack of transparency with this approach to aid and development that the current NZAID processes of delivering aid have in place, he said.

“While NGOs are not adverse to trade initiatives to stimulate economies to bring benefits, aid needs to reach the most marginalized and I don’t believe subsidising airfares will make a big difference to those struggling below the poverty line. What the people of these Pacific nations need are the tools to improve their own circumstances such as literacy and microcredit not subsidised airline routes. I think the New Zealand public would agree that using their aid money for this purpose doesn’t qualify as giving aid.”

Mr Tollestrup said, While it could be argued that a precedent exists for such a scheme through NZAID’s work with Niue, it must be recognised that this is the exception not the norm, and that Niue’s circumstances following the devastation of cyclone Heta necessitated a more involved approach to its overall infrastructure.

“There needs to be wider dialogue with the stakeholders and public before any decision is made about merging NZAid with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as mixing trade with aid can be manipulated to benefit the powerful rather those in most need.”

ENDS

TEAR Fund NZ is a Christian aid and development organisation which works in close partnership with indigenous non-government organisations and churches in Asia, Africa, Central and South America. TEAR Fund actively changes the lives of the poor and oppressed through disaster relief, community development, Microenterprise, and child sponsorship. In NZ since 1975, Tear Fund is a member of the Council for International Development, the NZ Disaster Relief Forum and has representation on the Government’s project funding allocation committee.

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