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More than $500 million of the aid package has already gone towards rebuilding more than a hundred schools, constructing 1200 temporary shelters with running water and sanitation, as well as restoring hospitals and health clinics.
The parliamentary secretary for international development assistance, Bob McMullan, said the money was being spent on schedule.
''At the moment just over half has actually been spent and by the end of this financial year we expect that to be up towards 70 per cent,'' Mr McMullan said.
''At it's simplest it's about making people's lives better and there are a lot of peoples lives better as a consequence of this, most obviously in Aceh.
''So from a humanitarian point of view that [is] justification enough.
''If you add [Australia's] national interest in the terms of a peaceful, prosperous and democratic Indonesia on our doorstep, then it's been a good investment.'' The Aceh area was devastated four years ago when an earthquake off the Sumatran coast triggered a tsunami that wreaked havoc in low-lying nations ringing the Indian Ocean.
In Indonesia alone, 167,000 people died and more than 50,000 people were left homeless.
The Howard government responded to the natural disaster by giving our northern neighbour a $1 billion aid package, to be administered by the Australian Indonesian Partnership for Reconstruction and Development, to rebuild affected areas in Aceh and north Sumatra.
The immediate humanitarian crisis has passed and the aid package is now targeting long-term projects such as health, infrastructure and importantly from an Australian security perspective according to Mr McMullan education.
''It is providing alternative opportunities for education where people might have been otherwise only had access to more extremist groups who provided educational opportunites,'' Mr McMullan said.
source:canberratimes.com
