The Coalition’s costings today reveal it is proposing cutting foreign aid/overseas development assistance by $800 million over four years.

Australian aid is already low, by international standards and by historical standards in Australia.

The Coalition Government cut aid dramatically, and the Labor Government has been content to let it wither further.

The cuts are also a blow to the authority of Senator Dean Smith, the Coalition’s charities spokesperson.

One week ago he was asked at the National Press Club whether he could rule out cuts to foreign aid.

He demurred, pointing out that he does not have the authority to make that commitment (the charities sector employs over a million Australians, but doesn’t get a minister or shadow minister).

But he did say (at 50:00 in the Press Club video):

“I think, having made a $21 billion defence commitment like the one that’s been made [by the Liberal Party] today, it would seem counterintuitive or counterproductive to then remove foreign aid funding at a time when a vacuum is clearly emerging. … 

“Where vacuums get created in the international order, people fill them, and more often than not at the moment they are filled by our opponents.”

There you have it, in the words of the Coalition’s charities spokesperson: the Coalition’s foreign aid cuts are counterintuitive and counterproductive and will leave a vacuum for Australia’s opponents to fill.