The overseas aid organisation Care Australia has prided itself on being administratively lean. It prided itself on getting the maximum percentage of the money that was entrusted to it by the Australian people to the people overseas for whom it was intended. It expressed this pride in terms of what a low percentage of its total funds went in administration. Alas, it seems the low percentage was a false economy. An audit this week showed several severe deficiencies in the way Care Australia dealt with its funds. As a result Care has been forced to repay $238,000 to the Federal Government.
In comparing the effectiveness of various overseas-aid bodies, one has to look behind raw percentage figures on the percentage of funds going on administration. It may well be that, up to a point, a higher percentage spent on administration means that the rest of the money is better accounted for and better directed, and therefore overall better accounted for and therefore the organisation is more effective. Care Australia’s chair, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, said the problems in the audit related to events before 1991 and the organisation had systems in place to rectify the problems _ presumably at some administrative cost. The Minister for Development Cooperation, Gordon Bilney, says a follow-up audit will be conducted in six months. Australians will be rightly concerned about deficiencies in the way their donations have been spent.
There is some comfort, though, in the fact that the deficiencies have been uncovered and that presumably other audited agencies are not deficient. There is some comfort in the fact that the Federal Government has an audit process to ensure that those agencies which attract tax deductibility account for the way they spend the money. In effect, tax deductibility amounts to almost a dollar-for-dollar government grant. Australia’s foreign aid is too low and often too greatly tied to economic spin-offs for Australia. None the less, it is an expression of a moral duty to help those less fortunate in the world. Australians have to accept that there are administrative and other sometimes unpalatable costs (such as bribes) in getting aid to its target. But without them, no aid at all would get through. The events surrounding Care are not a cause for Australians to close their purses.