Australia shirking on foreign aid: Tim Costello

The Australian 10:50am April 2, 2018

Rachel Baxendale

World Vision Australia chief advocate Tim Costello has called for Australia to lift our foreign aid funding ahead of the May federal budget, warning that the books are being balanced at the expense of the world’s poorest people.

With foreign aid levels at their lowest in Australia’s history, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has dismissed reports that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has modelled cuts, saying there will be no reduction to foreign aid.

Mr Costello said he was “very concerned” by the modelling.

“I’m very reassured by Julie Bishop saying that,” he told ABC radio.

“What Australians maybe don’t understand is that we cut aid, Australian aid, by $11 billion in the (2014) Abbott-Hockey budget.

“In other words, 20 per cent of all the savings they made in that budget came from the poorest people in the world, who don’t happen to vote, so you could get away with it I guess, and that’s reduced our aid levels to the lowest ever in our history.”

Mr Costello said Australia had an obligation to live up to the standard of devoting 70 cents to aid for every $100 dollars of gross national income.

“It distresses us not just because it literally costs lives and smashes hope for poor women and children, but it gives us a leave pass when other nations like Great Britain are keeping their promise of 70 cents in 100 dollars of gross national income, we’re already down to 22 cents, so our promise, like Great Britain and the Scandinavian countries who do 70 cents is that figure,” he said.

Mr Costello said he was not opposed to withdrawing aid from Southeast Asian countries considered to be middle income, such as Indonesia, as long as it went to people in greater need, such as the Rohingya fleeing Myanmar.

“Cyclone season is about to start, and I’ve been to Cox’s Bazar (in Bangladesh, near the Myanmar border), I described it like going through the gates of hell, the utter desolation and congestion of nearly a million Rohingya there, utterly caught with 100 per cent humidity, 40 degree heat, black plastic that just radiates heat which is what their little shanties are made out of,” he said.

“We don’t need to be arguing about middle income countries, we need to be saying our aid levels stay certainly at the same level, we want them increased to actually target the most desperate people in our region.”

“In a world where we know the cutting of aid in Syria from $30 a month to the Syrian refugees in Lebanon in Jordan, the cutting of aid from $30 a month to $13.50, literally they couldn’t feed their families and they started heading toward Europe and across the Mediterranean, and it strikes me as tragic there’s always money for defence, there’s always money for guns, and in Syria this war couldn’t have gone on for more than a year without the major powers including us funnelling our weapons to our side believing they could win, and now 12 million Syrians displaced.”

Mr Costello said Australia’s foreign aid spending was damaging our international reputation.

“This is a major ethical issue, that we actually have responsibilities even to distant strangers, not just to our own, and that’s the Easter reflection I’d like Australians at least thinking about,” he said.

“Often people say we should just look after our own and they set our own poor off against the poor overseas, they don’t set our own poor off against super concessions and negative gearing or even defence spending which continues to go up, but secondly, this idea that we’ll just look after our own self-interest is wrong.

“Aid and development as China and other nations prove is in our self-interest. When you actually help develop nations they’re your future trading partners, they’re far less likely to go to war with you, they’re far less likely to try and leave desperate Pacific Islands and try to come here, jump on boats literally, so aid is also enlightened self-interest.”