Hi and welcome to an NZADDs update,

2024 will be a bad budget for aid if promised cuts materialise

From time to time my friends ask me what I miss most about Australia. When they do, I cast my mind over the golden sand beaches, the deep blue waters of the tropics and the majesty of the Outback. But my answer is always the same: “I miss the PDFs”

Their response is always the same too: “The PDFs!?!”

“Yeah sure”, I say, “everything from the smallest mite to the largest crocodile wants to kill you, but in Australia at least they release clear, detailed, timely PDFs outlining their aid budget.”

New Zealand aid transparency has improved in recent months. But the improvements are all to do with project details. Transparency when it comes to high-level data, like how much we’re actually planning to give, is still lacking.

And so I’ve spent the last few hours carefully navigating sprawling Treasury spreadsheets and labyrinthine budget estimates files.

Here’s what I’ve found:

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Hi and welcome to an NZADDs update,

Transparency should be central to aid: it’s our money being spent, and unless donors are transparent, we have no way of knowing how it’s being used.

As I’ve pointed out in the past, New Zealand’s government aid programme has had something of a transparency problem. Even finding out basics, like how much we plan to spend next year, has involved pulling apart Treasury spreadsheets and interrogating uncooperative PDFs. The problem was so bad that the OECD raised it in their last review of New Zealand aid.

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