Assistant Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Anne Ruston, has added to the long list of meaningless aid funding promises by the Coalition by pledging there will be no reduction in the investment and involvement of Australia in our aid budget.
In the 2013 election Tony Abbott promised to maintain aid funding, then cut $11 billion over the next three years, driving aid funding down to our lowest level on record.
In 2016 then Foreign Minister Julie Bishop actually committed in writing to maintain aid funding in real terms, promising aid groups the aid programme will increase by the consumer price index from 2017 18, providing predictability to Australias aid partners.
In the very next Budget this promise was broken, with then Treasurer Scott Morrison cutting $300 million by freezing the foreign aid indexation until the 2021-22 Budget.
And the very next Budget after that, he did it again, by extending that freeze until 2022-23.
The carefully chosen words by the Assistant Minister make no commitment to maintain aid funding in real terms, or to taking any steps to turn around our already embarrassingly low level of aid funding.
It confirms, yet again, how little the Pacific, and foreign aid, matters to the Morrison Government.
Australian development assistance spending is now at its lowest level in history - just 22 cents in every $100 of our national income will be spent on foreign aid in 2018-19 and Scott Morrisons own Budget Papers forecast it will fall even further to just 0.19 per cent of GNI over the forward estimates.
Labor has repeatedly urged the Government to return to a properly bipartisan approach to international development assistance.
Instead of continuing to prioritise massive tax cuts for big business, the Morrison Government must join Labor in committing to lifting Australias embarrassingly low level of international development assistance by guaranteeing they will, at the very least, recommence indexation of our international development budget.
Authorised by Noah Carroll, ALP, Canberra.