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Thank you very much, Tom. Thank you for the invitation to come along this morning. I also welcome my Parliamentary colleagues, very many of them.

Can I welcome you all here and congratulate you for the work that you've done in recent days and weeks to raise awareness of the need for Australia to make its contribution to eradicate worldwide poverty and also to raise awareness within the Australian community of our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals.

I particularly welcome those people from Perth, Western Australia, who have come as ambassadors from my own home town and congratulations to all of you as ambassadors for the various towns, cities and regions from where you've come.

Tom made the point that this week, Budget Week, often there is a focus on what the Government of Australia is doing to ensure our national security, what the Government of Australia is doing to ensure sound economic development and the need for all Australians to have a fair share in that economic development.

It's also a time when people don't focus enough on the need for Australia to be a good international citizen. And the need for Australia to be a good international citizen is at the heart of the Government's commitment so far as development assistance is concerned and at the heart of the Government's commitment so far as AusAID and the AusAID budget is concerned.

Often there is a view that the primary obligation of the Government is to protect and defend our national security or that the primary obligation on the part of the Government is to enhance the economic welfare of Australia's people.

We don't pay enough attention to the fact that very often people think that the primary obligation of a Government is to do its best to help uplift the spirit of the Australian people. And the work that you do, in my view, falls directly into that category, to help uplift the spirit of the Australian people by showing the Australian people that as a prosperous well-developed nation, a country within the top 15 economies, a country whose prosperity is again in the top 15 countries, that we have an obligation to make our contribution to those people in the world who need and deserve a helping hand.

We were very pleased in this year's Budget that for the third Budget in a row we were able to increase the allocation to development assistance and humanitarian assistance.

The additional funds this year is some $500 million, half a billion dollars. So the additional increase to development assistance since we came to office is now more than $1.2 billion.

We, of course, are absolutely committed to our election commitment to meet 0.5 per cent of gross national income by 2015-16.

This year we saw a changed calculation in the way in which gross national income or the size and strength of our economy is calculated and the effect of that changed calculation, we're now looking at an economy which is about four per cent larger.

That has not shaken our resolve to meet our commitment to get to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2015-16 and those changed calculations, albeit technical, those changed calculations will have the effect that between now and 2015-16 when we meet our commitment to 0.5 per cent of gross national income, we will see the expenditure of an additional 2.9 - approximately $2.9 billion for development assistance. That's $2.9 billion more that we will expend than we thought we would at this time last year.

And to do that, as Tom has indicated, to do that we need to make sure that AusAID, our development assistance agency, has the capacity, has the structure, has the management effectiveness to be able to administer a program which will essentially increase from two to three billion to about nine billion over a relatively short period of time.

But it is not just what Parliamentarians and Governments seek and try to do. Recently I was in the Caribbean and one of the features of our development assistance program now is that we have extended our program not just from our primary area or cornerstone of responsibility, the Pacific and Asia - so vast bulks of our program go to Papua New Guinea and the Pacific and to Indonesia and South-East Asia - but extending it now to Africa and to the Caribbean. I was in the Caribbean recently and a person from Haiti came up and congratulated the Government for its contribution of $24 million to reconstruction in Haiti and I said thank you very much for that, you need to understand Australia's contribution was $50 million - $24 million from the Government but $26 million from Australians who voluntarily contributed to Australian NGO's, international NGOs, when they saw the devastation that had fallen upon Haiti.

That is quite substantially different from an Australian historical contribution to a natural disaster in the Caribbean. Normally you would see, historically, a modest contribution because it was not in our part of the world. Now, regrettably, when natural disasters occur, as they do all too regularly, we see them on our TV screens, literally as it happens and that sees an outpouring of generosity, a spirit of generosity from the Australian people which is one of our great Australian characteristics, one of our great values and one of our great virtues.

So can I thank you for your attendance here today. Can I thank you for your unflagging commitment to the cause of progress and achieving the Millennium Development Goals, to helping ensure that Australia plays its part in the eradication of poverty and also for being interested enough and active enough to do your bit to keep Governments and Members of Parliament on their toes.

We are pleased with the contribution that we've made this year but one of the points that Tom made, and I make it in my own words, is we can always do more, we can always do better. And in the case, for example, of climate change, we believe very strongly that we have an obligation to do our bit to assist those countries who have done the least to see us where we are now, in terms of a climate change contribution, but who run the risk of suffering the most extreme consequences of adverse climate change, namely small island states of which we have many friends and neighbours and partners in the Pacific, but there are comparable island states subject to that same difficulty in the Indian Ocean and in the Caribbean.

So we are working very closely on climate change, fast-start financing on climate change adaptation and mitigation, with those low income and developing countries, particularly small island nation-states.

We believe that that is an important and a substantial contribution to make, not just for climate change but for low income and developing countries.

So thank you for being here, thank you for showing your interest and thank you for doing your bit to discharge what I regard as an important obligation on behalf of our nation throughout the world, to conduct ourselves as a good international citizen and to do our bit to uplift the spirit of our nation. Thanks very much.

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