The Government's new international development 
policy and performance framework will drive
exciting and important reforms within Australia's aid program.
The world has changed—and our aid program must change too.
Many developing countries are growing rapidly, with foreign aid representing an increasingly
small proportion of development finance. To be effective in this new context, Australia's
aid policy needs to be more innovative and
we need to partner more creatively with the
key drivers of economic development to reduce poverty.
We will consolidate the aid program to focus
on what we do best and where we can make the
biggest difference.
We recognise the role trade plays in development.
So we will use our aid to strengthen the private
sector in ways that expands trading opportunities,
creates jobs and grows the economies in our
region. Aid for trade investments will be
increased to 20 per cent of the aid budget
by 2020.
Acknowledging the links between human development
and economic growth, the aid program will
continue to invest in education, health, reducing
disaster risks and responding to humanitarian
crises, recognising these as a necessary foundation
for economic development.
We will focus programs on empowering women
and girls so they can take part in the formal
economy, forging their own destinies and contributing
to the well-being of their countries. Under
the Government's new aid policy, 80 per cent
of our aid investments will effectively address
gender issues because everyone benefits from
women's full participation in economic, political
and social life.
We will embrace partnerships which leverage
different financial models, and capture the
brightest ideas from a wide range of sources
to ensure we are at the cutting edge of responding
to complex development challenges.
Over the next four years we will trial and
test development innovations with a $140m
innovation fund. And we will become a founding
partner in the Global Development Innovation
Ventures program -- a ground breaking program
supported by the US and British Aid agencies
-- that will identify, test and scale up successful
new approaches to development. And we will
establish a new development Innovation Hub
within the Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade to come up with ideas and concepts that
are outside the square!
Australia will continue to be one of the world's
most generous aid donors. The Government has
stabilised our aid budget at over five billion
dollars a year to ensure it is responsible,
affordable and sustainable, increasing at
CPI from 2016.
A new performance framework with ten high
level targets will drive the changes required
in the aid program and ensure that it is effectively
delivered.
Funding will be directed to projects that
make a real and measurable difference. Where
projects don't deliver the results we expect,
we will cease funding them. When they do well,
we will look for ways to expand or replicate
them.
Together, the new development policy and performance
framework represent a paradigm shift for Australia's
aid program.
This will build an aid program that both projects
and protects Australia's interests while effectively
promoting economic growth and development,
to reduce poverty and lift standards of living
in our region.
We will make a positive difference to our
world.
