Spending priorities









Some Questions to the Australian  Government Regarding  Overseas  Aid


Australia’s foreign aid is the most important means by which Australia can foster good relations with other countries, alleviate poverty, influence decisions, and promote stability, peace and development. This is especially true   for the Pacific island states   which have been heavily impacted   by climate change.

 In poor countries the impact of global warming  - apart from  threatening the   survival, water  and   food  supplies - tends to create or intensify conflict to access of resources and, thereby, it strengthens the root causes of terrorism. Because of this it is imperative for Australia, whose small, neighbouring nations are very much impacted by climate change, to drastically increase foreign aid spending.

Other countries (not only China) are, indeed doing this and Britain, for example, last year achieved the UN-set norm of  0.7 % of GNP - in spite of its economic austerity program. In contrast, the Coalition led government in Australia has since 2013 steadily cut back the aid  budget, reducing it by nearly a quarter to  its lowest point in history. It now amounts to a miserable 0.19 % of GDP, less than a third  of what it should be. Worse still, it is scheduled  to decline further  by another  11% over  the next 2  years. 

·         Why is Australia’s foreign aid funding decreasing, while other countries are increasing spending in this area?

Foreign aid contributes to peace and stability just as much, if not more than, defence. Yet the Australian government is choosing to ignore the pro-active means for peace building and reverts to a ‘defence first ‘policy with the military budget increasing in leaps and bounds  to  a  level of 2 %  of GDP ( with $1 trillion committed  to dysfunctional  submarines). Thus Australia is close to spending $10 on defence for every $1 on aid (DevBlog 10, 2016).  If the money (ca $ 700 million dollars) the government  spends  on fighting terrorism is added the imbalance is even grosser.


  •          Why are the military budget and the ODA budget not balanced? And why are the budgets of both arbitrarily determined rather than in relation to their efficacy in promoting peace and global security?  

Australia’s recent “Pacific Step Up” does not change the picture because its $2bn infrastructure financing facility for the Pacific is to be funded out of the ODA budget. It thus,  ‘robbs Peter to pay Paul’ and  comes at the expense of stopping   programs in Asia, especially  Pakistan and Nepal. This is unfair and strategically short-sighted and will have ‘real geopolitical and economic implications’ (Tyler, AsiaLink).

·         Why does Australia neglect Asia in its ODA when Asian countries are our      biggest neighbours and most important economic and strategic partners ?  


The Howard government started to shift Australia’s ODA spending away from human empowerment and poverty alleviation towards “governance” (now 24% of ODA), i.e. the strengthening of institutions, especially security forces and the military. This can easily be used by authoritarian regimes to suppress resistance, as in the case of Indonesia and West Papua. Thus our ODA spending is turned towards the opposite of what it is legitimately aimed at. And this trend is becoming the stronger the longer   Australia allows  bilateral agreements on the use of ODA to expire  ( 25 out of 29 contracts have already lapsed!). 

  •          Why is the lion  share  of Australia’s ODA directed towards governance rather than infrastructure and poverty alleviation? And why does Australia allow so many  bilateral agreements on the use of ODA  to expire, thereby effectively relinquishing  control  over  how its  aid is  spent?



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