McCully said his government wants to do more and do it better.
He has put a lot of emphasis on making the move from aid as a “hand out” to a “hand up.”
“Unashamedly I have made it clear that I want to see us do more in the Cook Islands because there is no closer relationship that New Zealand has — because if we work a bit harder now and do a bit more now, the results will be significantly greater in the medium term,” he said.
McCully said his three-day visit, which ended on Friday, was part of holding talks with those in the region like the Cooks that receive aid from NZ.
“There are many areas around the world where you can pour quite a lot of money in with no certainty that you are going to see things measurably improve. If we are intelligent about what we do, we can make quite a bit of difference here. I’m determined to see the new government do its best to achieve those sorts of results,” he said.
He said while aid budgets to the Cooks, Samoa and Tonga have increased substantially in recent years, little improvement has been seen from it.
McCully said the New Zealand National Party went into the election last year promising to review the structures by which they delivered aid, but also change some of the settings.
“We talked about slimming down the focus of our development assistance to a smaller number of recipients. We talked about focusing very much on our own region where we have closer friendships, family relationships and a much bigger capacity to make a difference with what we do. We talked about shifting the focus from a ‘hand out’ to a ‘hand up’ approach, making sure that we were giving priority to areas that would create sustainable economic development.” he said.
“Now there’s a new government in the process of trying to do what we said we were going to do.”
Other donor countries are also being encouraged to work together on aid, said McCully. “We’ve been trying to encourage the government of China to work more cooperatively with donors like New Zealand and Australia so we get the best bang for the buck. We shouldn’t see aid as something for competition — and we don’t.”
McCully prefers not to comment on the effect of the increasing amount of grants and loans China is providing to small Pacific countries like the Cooks.
McCully has ordered a review of the way NZAID is run and this visit is part of his efforts to change the way it is applied. “We are also trying to engage with our friends and partners to consult with them about how we can move forward.”
