Mr RIPOLL (12:58 PM) —2005 is a big year for Australia in the multinational order. Apart from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference this month and the meeting of the 60th United Nations General Assembly later this year, which will discuss Kofi Annan’s proposal for UN reform, we have the Millennium Development Goals Plus Five Summit. This summit will be the first formal assessment of progress towards the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals agreed by all governments, including Australia, in New York in September 2000. The IMF and the World Bank earlier this month released their formal Global Monitoring Report on the first five years of progress and, in some cases, nonprogress in the realisation of the specific MDGs. As the outgoing Australian President of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, said when releasing the Global Monitoring Report on 12 April 2005:

According to that report:

The report further observed:

Specifically, goal 6 of the MDGs addresses ‘HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases’. The target is: ‘to have halted and started to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases by 2015’. This is a truly serious problem. The ALP foreign policy statement of 2004 emphasised this, stating:

According to the World Health Organisation an estimated 1.8 million people died from tuberculosis in 2002. South-East Asia, with 625,000 deaths, Africa, with 556,000, and the western Pacific, with 373,000, were the most affected regions. Tuberculosis interacts with HIV-AIDS in devastating ways. People who are HIV positive are more likely to become sick when infected with TB than those who are HIV negative. According to the World Health Organisation, tuberculosis is the leading cause of death of those with HIV-AIDS worldwide, accounting for 13 per cent of all AIDS related deaths. In Africa HIV-AIDS is the most important factor behind increased incidence of tuberculosis over the past decade. Malaria continues to take a high human toll in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Health Organisation, the roughly 300 million acute cases of malaria each year result in more than one million deaths around the world. Around 90 per cent of these fatalities occur in Africa alone.

I want to place on record also ACFID’s statement on AIDS. ACFID states:

To its credit, Australia has made HIV-AIDS a priority in the aid program. Australia has increased funding over the past two years and has made an initial $52 million contribution to the global fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. This is appropriate and welcome, but there is much more that can and should be done if we are to contribute our fair share to this region and the people in our region, our neighbours. At the new level of funding for the HIV-AIDS programs Australia will be contributing $3 per person for HIV-AIDS over the period 2005 to 2007. This compares with $15 per capita being contributed by the USA and $22 by the United Kingdom. I believe that Australia should make a stronger effort in this area. (Time expired)