DAVID ADAMS reports on reactions to Tuesday night’s federal budget…
Humanitarian aid organisations and Christian advocates have expressed their “deep disappointment” as scheduled $224 million cuts to Australia’s foreign aid budget will go ahead under the federal budget handed down on Tuesday night.
The decision comes despite intensive lobbying in the past few months by various aid organisations and Christian groups in the run-up to the federal budget. This included in an open letter signed by 12 prominent Christian leaders urging Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison not to go ahead with the planned cuts.
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Parliament House in Canberra where the federal budget was handed down Tuesday night. “The reality is that it’s people and communities struggling against poverty in our region and other parts of the world who will bear the consequences of these cuts.”– Ben Thurley, national coordinator of Micah Australia |
Ben Thurley, national coordinator of Micah Australia – a national coalition of churches and Christian agencies, said the cuts will take foreign aid to it lowest ever level and would make Australia “the least generous we’ve ever seen”.
“Coming on top of more than $11 billion in cuts to aid since coming to office, this will be the fourth time the government has targeted Australian aid for cuts.”
According to Micah Australia, the cuts will drop Australia’s contribution to overseas aid to just just 0.23 per cent of gross national income (GNI) in 2016-17 to 0.21 per cent by 2019-20.
Mr Thurley said the cuts showed Australia was “stepping back its role in building a fairer world”.
“The reality is that it’s people and communities struggling against poverty in our region and other parts of the world who will bear the consequences of these cuts.”
He said Micah Australia remained determined to continue the campaign to have the cuts reversed and called on all political parties to restore the aid program.
Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision Australia, said the “madness of endless aid cuts” must come to an end, saying that the latest cuts “puts lives and futures at risk as well as regional and global security and prosperity” – something he said is “both unwise and unworthy of our nation”.
Mr Costello called on both the Federal Government and the Opposition to commit to restoring Australia’s foreign aid budget to its pre-cuts level of $5.5 billion – still just 0.3 per cent of GNI – in the lead-up to the federal election in July.
And while he said it was particularly disappointing that aid to what World Vision called “fragile states” such as Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan continued to be cut, he did welcome a strengthened commitment to the Syrian crisis.
Lyle Shelton, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby, also described the foreign aid cuts as “deeply disappointing” given Australia’s position as one of the world’s wealthiest nations.
“There is no quarrel with the idea that countries, like families, need to live within their means,” he said in a statement issued Tuesday night. “But most of us have mortgages and yet still manage to sponsor a child…and give to our local church’s mission programs helping the poor in developing countries. Just as we are encouraged to be generous as individuals, so too should our nation (be).”
Mr Shelton said it was a “great shame” Australia had walked away from the Millennium Developed Goal-related promise to increase aid to 0.7 per cent of GNI and said the ACL would use the run-up to the federal election to encourage both sides of politics to begin rebuilding Australia’s foreign aid program.
Among other organisations which spoke out against the foreign aid cuts were UNICEF Australia and Catholic humanitarian agency Caritas Australia with the latter’s CEO, Paul O’Callaghan, said the move would “confirm our major turn to insularity and not providing a reasonable share in the global response”.
“Australia’s partners in the region and beyond comment with regret that Australia has given up its shared leadership role in combatting poverty,” he said.
Meanwhile, responding to other aspects of the federal budget, Wesley Mission CEO Rev Dr Keith Garner said the organisation welcomed a number of initiatives in the budget such as an initiative aimed at getting 120,000 young people into work and said the Federal Government had also shown “a degree of long overdue moral courage” in initiatives to crackdown on multinational tax evasion and superannuation loopholes for the wealthy.
“The focus for the past few years has been on cutting expenditure with little focus on revenue streams,” Rev Dr Garner said. “Thus budget goes part of the way in addressing this inbalance.”
But Rev Dr Garner added that homelessness remains a “national shame”. “There was little in this budget to address the issue of housing and rental affordability. Wesley Mission sees the growing demand for homelessness each day having provided more than 73,700 nights of accommodation for the homeless last year.”
Australian Council of Social Service Dr Cassandra Goldie also welcomed the tightening of superannuation concessions for the wealthy, changes to youth employment programs and action on multinational tax avoidance, but added that “harsh cuts affecting people on low incomes remain locked in with more announced and more likely to come”.
“The budget locks in $13 billion in cuts from family payments, income support for young people and paid parental leave, and adds a further $3 billion in cuts to payments and essential services,” she said. “This includes cuts to Medicare and dental health and income support for people with disability.”
