politicalowl

On Tuesday when our Foreign Minister Julie Bishop staged a jog around with her UK counterpart Boris Johnson, back in his Foreign Office they were grappling with the catalogue of abuse and harassment allegations at some of Britain’s biggest aid charities. Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, was setting a weeks-end deadline to submit reports on how they are protecting children and vulnerable people. Ms Mordaunt revealed she had set the deadline for almost 200 UK charities to disclose any safeguarding issues after aid charities admitted to a string of sexual misconduct claims.  “Given the concerns about the wider sector this case has raised, I have written to every UK charity working overseas that receives UK aid – 192 organisations – insisting that they spell out the steps they are taking to ensure their safeguarding policies are fully in place and confirm they have referred all concerns they have about specific cases and individuals to the relevant author...

Thursday, 12th April, 2007    - Richard Farmer   Annmaree O'Keeffe In Beijing at the end of last month a group of Australian government officials got together with some counterparts from the Chinese Department of Commerce for a celebration to mark 25 years of co-operation. Annmaree O'Keeffe, AusAID's deputy director general and Yu Jianhua, director of the Ministry’s Department of International Trade and Economic Affairs toasted the $1 billion given in foreign aid to China since the first Aussie dollar was spent in 1981. With China now having some trillion dollars in currency reserves and having become the largest lender to Africa, reportedly loaning at least $8 billion to the continent, it might have been an appropriate occasion to mark the end of this aid relationship but it was not so. On the future direction of Australia's programs Ms O'Keeffe told the happy gathering "our partnership will be focused on supporting equity in China's deve...