We raised this yesterday – the Coalition’s planned $800m cut over four years to foreign aid and international development, which was buried in the costings document.
This is something, as Bill Browne also noted yesterday, the Coalition’s own charities spokesperson, Dean Smith, thought would seem “counterintuitive or counterproductive” when he was asked about the potential for the Coalition cutting aid at a press club event, just last week.
As Bill reported yesterday:
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.”
The Coalition has said funding for the Pacific will be kept separate from any cuts and has promised $2bn in infrastructure funding if it wins government, mostly through grants and loans.
That policy has been criticised by those in the know who say most Pacific nations do not have the funds to repay loans like the ones the Coalition is proposing and those nations will look to other nations to help fund their needs.
As AAP reports, since taking office in 2022, Anthony Albanese’s Labor government has increased foreign aid each year, but at a slower rate than Australian prosperity has grown.
As a share of gross national income (GNI), Australia spends 0.19 per cent on aid – ranking it 28th of 32 developed nations. On that measure, just four nations spend less: Czech Republic, Greece, Slovakia and Hungary.
A decade earlier, Australia spent 0.31 per cent of GNI, and was ranked 13th.
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