Question Time - 25/3/15 - Foreign Aid

Mr HAWKE (Mitchell) (14:25): My question is to the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Will the minister advise the House of steps the government has taken to ensure Australia has a more sustainable, effective and efficient aid program?

Ms JULIE BISHOP (Curtin–Minister for Foreign Affairs) (14:25): I thank the member for Mitchell for his question. I can assure him that the Australian Government is delivering a more effective, more efficient and sustainable aid budget and one that is affordable–one that the Australian taxpayers can afford. Our focus, of course, is on improving lives of the people in our region, and we need to broaden and deepen the impact of our aid spend.

On Monday, I launched innovationXchange, which is a new idea for bringing together entrepreneurs, businesses, creative thinkers and aid organisations to develop and scale up practical solutions to some of the most intractable aid problems facing our region. Our partnership that we announced with Bloomberg Philanthropies is a great example. We will be using the latest technologies to gather vital health data on births and deaths and causes of death deaths, so that we can have evidence based health outcomes. This is how we can make our aid dollar go further.

...