There are fears foreign aid to Australia’s South Pacific neighbours could be in for a chop in next week’s budget and experts say that would leave the door open to an ever increasing Chinese influence in the region.

Australia has committed to a doubling of its aid budget to about $8 billion by 2015, but there is concern that next week’s budget could slash that target.

Professor Stephen Howes, director of International and Development Economics at ANU, says the Government could even scrap the plan altogether.

“There is also speculation that the Government, if it hits the pause button this year, will push back the 2015 target or that they might abandon it altogether,” he said.

Regional experts fear that could give China’s growing influence even more room to move.

From the tiniest atolls to the bigger island states of the South Pacific, China is throwing its largesse around.

In East Timor it is a multi-million dollar defence headquarters; in the Cook Islands an impressive sporting complex and in Vanuatu the regional centre of the Melanesian spearhead group, just to name a few.

Fergus Hanson, from the Brookings Institute in Washington, has done four reports into China’s aid program in the region.

“If we take a starting point of about 2005 to the present, China has increased aid from a relatively modest amount – roundabout $30 million a year – up to around a level of around $200 million a year,” he said.

“It’s got quite a large diplomatic presence. There’s different reports that say it’s got the most number of diplomats on the ground in the countries that it covers.”

Playing by their own rules

Professor Richard Herr is the director for the Centre of International and Regional Affairs at the University of Fiji and says China plays by its own rules.

“They’re not particularly good at working multilaterally and yet in the South Pacific area a lot of our relationships are multilateral,” he said.

“And it doesn’t have an effective aid coordination arrangement so that aid comes out of a number of different baskets in Beijing and so they don’t actually have an aid policy that can coordinate effectively with regional or indeed even international efforts.”

What also worries regional observers is that much of China’s engagement is now delivered in the form of soft loans.

Fergus Hanson says this can hamper development rather than promote it.

“In the case of a country like Tonga, for example, you’re talking about 30 per cent of the country’s GDP is actually accounted for in soft loans pledged by China,” he said.

“One consequence could be we’re pushed to help these countries get out of their debt situation. So I think that would certainly be something we’d want to avoid; having to help repay Chinese loans.”

Professor Howes led the Government-commissioned review into foreign aid last year.

He concluded that the South Pacific had the highest strategic value for Australia and recommended significant aid increases.

“For PNG and Solomon’s we recommended a fairly small increase on the grounds that we weren’t confident that we’d get a high value for a major expansion of those aid programs because of the underlying governance problems,” he said.

“South Pacific microstates we recommended a doubling of aid.”

To keep the Pacific in Australia’s sphere of influence and aid delivery transparent, Professor Herr says the Federal Government needs to stay on track with its aid commitments.

“These are people that need education, health, job opportunities [and they’re] all on our doorstep,” he said.

“These are Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji and these are the states that have the most resources and in that sense our aid, and the effectiveness of our aid, will certainly be an issue with these states.”

Environmental scientists are worried that a rush to renovate old homes after the Queensland floods may have exposed hundreds of people to harmful amounts of lead.

Research from the US has shown that what were once considered small and safe exposures to lead can damage the brains of young children, shaving off IQ points and changing behaviour in some cases.

There have already been cases of lead poisoning in children after parents sanded paint from old flood-damaged homes without taking precautions.

“The effects are insidious,” said Professor Mark Taylor, an environmental scientist at Macquarie University.

“Often, the children don’t present with any clinical signs, and problems may not really arise until maybe children start entering school and they’re struggling in school, for example, with their reading and writing abilities.”

Homes with old paint in good condition or buried under layers of other paint are not considered a big risk.

The risk comes when old paint weathers or is damaged by water, and is then scraped or sanded, and there are children around who might eat the paint chips, crawl on the floor and lick their fingers, or inhale the dust.

“You probably will start seeing [high levels of lead in blood lead] now if you started to measure children’s blood,” says Dr Bruce Lanphear, a professor of environmental health at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

New research coming out of the US is showing that low levels of exposure can cause brain damage in children, but there is a debate about how significant that research is to Australia.

Toxicologist and emeritus professor Michael Moore, who is on Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council’s lead working group, says the effects seen in big, population-wide studies cannot be applied to individuals, and the magnitude of the problems associated with lead in paint is probably less than people imagine.

“The fact is that over the last 30 plus years there’s been a concerted program of de-leading of a whole range of things in our general living environment,” he said.

However, in the US, a committee of the Centres for Disease Control has already recommended halving the blood-lead intervention level from 10 micrograms per decilitre to five. The World Health Organisation is considering doing the same.

Government to blame?

After the floods last year, Cathy Mason and Michael Valance renovated their Ipswich house and discovered both of their boys had lead poisoning.

One recorded a level 22 micrograms per decilitre – more than twice the current limit – and the other recorded a level of 15 micrograms.

“When we found out, I was actually a bit angry at the Government for not warning us,” said Cathy Mason.

“When it flooded, everyone in the media pushed about, ‘Be careful of the mud’ because the water is diseased, ‘Be careful of the asbestos’ because we all know about that. But nothing was said about lead.”

Queensland Health would not talk to Radio National’s Background Briefing program, but released a statement saying the information on lead was readily available.

“Queensland Health’s post-flood focus was on the issue of asbestos debris and contaminated water problems as these were the issues of key public health concern,” the statement said.

“Information for the public in relation to dealing with lead in paint during home renovation and restoration work was already available and accessible to renovators and contractors.”

Ipswich painter Nigel Gorman, who now runs a lead paint advisory service, says he has seen unsafe practice in action.

“I’ve been driving past watching people grinding off their houses … that was the scariest part. And not just home owners, but painters.”

Standards review

Last October, a panel of scientists on the US National Toxicology Program said there was “sufficient evidence” that lead levels even under five micrograms per decilitre could harm children and adults.

The Australian National Health and Medical Research Council’s Lead Working Group is now considering the evidence, and whether to halve its blood-lead standard.

Environmental scientist Professor Mark Taylor says if Australia’s spread of lead exposure was similar to the US, there would be at least 100,000 Australian children already over that lower level.

The parents of just about all of them remain unaware of the risks.

“As a whole will we have failed. The public health community has failed and physicians have failed to warn families of these problems,” said Professor Bruce Lanphear, one of the scientists on the US National Toxicology Program panel.

– Listen to “Lead Poisoning: A Silent Epidemic” on Background Briefing, ABC Radio National, Sunday 6th May at 8.00am.