ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some types of aid policy decisions which stem from the Jackson Report’s recommendations on Australian bilateral aid to Asia. It summarises recent trends in Australian aid to Asia and the report’s chief recommendations on future aid to Asia. The chapter examines the logic of inter-country allocations of aid, and the current question of human rights and aid policy. It looks at the concept of country-programming in aid, especially the Jackson Report’s advocacy of ‘aid-for-growth’, and the authoritarian overtones of this rationale. The chapter sets out some alternatives to the report’s recommendations on these issues. The Australian aid program has often been criticised because the selection of programs and projects within a country seemed to be done on an ad hoc basis. The homogeneity which a country program might well encourage may not always be welcome, particularly when it contains an evaluation of a country’s development strategy.
