Sir Bob Geldof calls Government stingy over foreign aid

Sir Bob said people didn't die in NZ because of drought - but they did in Africa because they were poor. Picture / Richard Robinson

Rock legend and humanitarian Sir Bob Geldof today accused the Government of being mean over foreign aid, saying its contribution was pathetic and a disgrace.

But Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Sir Bob has his facts wrong and should have been better briefed.

Sir Bob, 54, in New Zealand to speak at a business leadership conference, said the 0.27 per cent of gross national income (GNI) the Government gave to impoverished countries was stingy .

"The New Zealand Government, frankly, must up their game," he said.

"The pathetic 0.27 per cent that this Government gives to the poorest people on the planet... is a disgrace.

"The great shame of New Zealand is that it is the [third] lowest in the world with their generosity and this surely does not represent the spirit of the electorate."

Sir Bob today met representatives of the Make Poverty History (MPH) organisation - a coalition of 60 New Zealand organisations campaigning against poverty - and signed a petition to Prime Minister Helen Clark.

MPH's chairman and executive director of Oxfam NZ Barry Coates said 25,000 New Zealanders had signed the petition calling on the Government to help cancel debt owed by poor countries, increase aid, balance world trade, and end child poverty in New Zealand.

Mr Coates said New Zealand was the third lowest aid donor among OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries - ahead only of the US and Japan per proportion of GNI.

"This is shameful," he said.

The Government has allocated $396.5 million (0.27 per cent of GNI) in aid in the 2006/07 budget, and plans to raise the proportion to 0.28 per cent by 2008.

Green MP Keith Locke said Sir Bob was right and New Zealand should give more in aid.

"We're at the back of the pack which is quite inconsistent with the way we're at the front in some other areas of international concern like peacekeeping and anti-nuclear disarmament," he said.

"Labour is not even keeping to election promise where it said it would get to 0.35 per cent of GNI by 2010. At the current rate there's no way it will get there," Mr Locke said.

MPH said New Zealand was one of only six countries which did not have a plan to reach the promised target of 0.7 per cent by 2015.

"At our current rate we will not reach this target until 2050."

Council for International Development executive director Rae Julian also said Sir Bob was right to call New Zealand's aid contribution a disgrace.

"New Zealand risks international opprobrium if the Government doesn't take serious action on this issue," she said.

But Mr Peters Sir Bob had got his facts wrong and the 0.27 per cent proportion was "well ahead" of the international average.

There were other aspects to New Zealand's contributions including the millions of dollars flowing out of the economy in remittances to Pacific countries, the significant contributions it made to peacekeeping, and its open economy that any country could trade with.

The quality of its aid, too, was important, and New Zealand's aid was "largely untied".

Sir Bob earned fame first for his rock stardom with the Boomtown Rats then as the organiser of 1985's Live Aid concert against global hunger.

He was joined at today's leadership show by Sex Pistols founder Malcolm McLaren, Saatchi and Saatchi world-wide creative director Bob Isherwood, and Trade Me founder Sam Morgan.

- NZPA