The spend worth making
As the head of Australia’s leading child rights organisation, you’d expect me to come to you with a list of arguments to support foreign aid that go like this: it’s the right thing to do; suffering anywhere is a collective responsibility; think of the children.
Of course, it is these things. But today there’s only one argument I want to make: foreign aid is a smart investment if you want Australia to be a safe and prosperous country. It’s the spend worth making if you want to reduce immigration pressures, extremism, and global health threats. It’s vital to prevent costly wars, create stable trade partners and strengthen Australia’s geopolitical status, all while creating a safer place at home.
Reports over recent days suggest our major parties are considering whether to boost foreign aid to fill in any gaps left by cuts across the Pacific and South-East Asia, or in fact, whether to join a disturbing aid-slashing trend.
As need grows around the world in the face of relentless crises, we're seeing governments significantly cutting their foreign aid budgets, either as an easy target to shore up defence spending, or to pander to rising nationalist sentiment. Just this week, the UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, announced his government will be cutting its foreign aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending. It’s a move which our colleagues in the UK have rightly condemned as a betrayal of the world’s most vulnerable children.
The UK’s latest announcement isn’t isolated – it reflects similar developments in countries like the US and The Netherlands. Last year the Dutch government announced unprecedented cuts to its foreign aid budget, with plans to slash development aid by more than two thirds over the next three years. The risk of isolationist contagion is real.
There is no doubt that threats to our world are intensifying and there are important questions to answer, including, how do we keep Australians safe? Among the answers must be a strong and healthy foreign aid program.
Australia can and must stand against this trend.
Backing foreign aid isn’t just altruism-it’s a strategic move to protect our own national security. When world leaders talk about wanting to maintain a rules-based order, they should be reminded that foreign aid is fundamental to ensuring long-term prosperity and therefore security. To do anything short of maintaining, if not increasing, foreign aid at this time is short-sighted and frankly dangerous.
Without foreign aid, education and economic markets risk collapse and investment opportunities disappear. Hungry and desperate people are pushed to extremist causes or are forced to flee their homelands. Diseases proliferate. And all these outcomes can travel to our shores. Isolation is an illusion.
There must be bipartisan agreement that Australia’s foreign aid contribution is protected Currently Australia allocates 0.19% of our Gross National Income (GNI) towards foreign aid – just 19 cents in every hundred dollars. The British Government’s announcement reduces theirs to 30 cents in every hundred dollars by comparison.
To those who say we should follow the path of the US and UK and remodel our aid program, I say we already have. A decade ago, the Abbott Government folded Australia’s stand-alone aid agency, AUSAID, into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, dramatically reduced our expenditure, and realigned aid spend to the ‘Indo Pacific’ region, in line with Australia’s national interests. What’s left is highly strategic, highly impactful and highly focussed on the needs of our region.
To anyone who thinks that foreign aid is ineffective or unaccountable, I say I have seen with my own eyes the concrete transformation it delivers for some of the world’s most vulnerable children and their communities. With our parliamentary delegation program, I have taken dozens of parliamentarians of all political stripes everywhere from the refugee camps and urban slums of Bangladesh to disaster-prone Vanuatu, where they have been able to see the impact of Australia’s aid and development work for themselves.