ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses five principal issues of Jackson Report including development strategy within developing countries; global economic relations; international finance; the quantity of Australian aid; and aid to Papua New Guinea (PNG). Economic growth or basic human needs are presented as the polar choices in setting development strategy. Economic relations between countries do not have a central place in the report nor should they have had, given the committee’s terms of reference. Official development assistance aid is a smaller part of the total financial receipts of developing countries than private lending through the international capital markets in the form of bank lending and the issue of bonds. The committee is bland and uncommitted about the quantity of aid. The committee’s principal recommendation about aid to PNG is that the aid relationship be ‘normalised’ by reducing, and eventually phasing out, budget support and replacing it with bilateral technical assistance, project aid, co-financing and other forms of specific program support.