Australia’s 2017-18 budget is expected to announce further cuts to Australian foreign aid to help fund an expansion of the country’s counter-terrorism activities. There is no doubt that counter-terrorism is both necessary and expensive, but it is a failure of logic – as well as Australia’s commitment to international welfare – to conflate foreign aid […]
Tag Archives: FOREIGN AID
When a government cuts spending, its non-voting constituents are always going to fare worse than those who do vote. Whatever residual anger might come at the next federal elections, Australias aid recipients wont be a part of that vote. As compared to budget cuts of $7.6 billion over the next five years, or a little […]
From the industry reaction to Australia’s overseas aid budget, one might have thought Canberra’s cruel bean-counters are intentionally starving Third World orphans. The budget announcement of keeping foreign aid at around 0.35% of gross national income, or almost $5.6 billion, reflects a stepping down from a forecast increase in aid to 0.38%, but still represents […]