Aid organisations have launched a campaign against any further reductions to foreign aid in the May budget.
They have called on the federal government to start rebuilding Australia's aid program, after cutting it by billions of dollars in the 2014-15 budget,
Head of Care Australia, Julia Newton-Howes, said it was striking that many coalition MPs she has met haven't grasped the magnitude of the cuts.
Ms Newton-Howes told SBS that the aid program had lost $11.3 billion.
“About 25 per cent of the cuts that have been made by this government have come out of the around one per cent of government spending that goes to the aid program,” she said.
“The aid program has taken a massively disproportionate hit in these cuts and actually this is damaging Australia's long term interests and I think it's been very, very useful to really bring the facts and figures to the attention of a wide range of MPs.”
Listen: Greg Dyett reports on agencies lobbying the government to stop any future cuts to foreign aid.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told SBS that the reduction in foreign aid was a direct consequence of Labor's refusal to support alternative savings measures currently before the parliament.
Ms Bishop said the figure included $5 billion in savings that Labor had proposed at the previous election.
James Goodman - a member of the management committee of AidWatch, which monitors the foreign aid budget - told SBS that too much foreign aid had been misdirected.
Mr Goodman said too much aid had been used to persuade governments to sign up to trade agreements, or to change the way their government operates.
“Aid, for instance, has been used to fund the offshore refugee processing program that's been in place for some years now,” he said.
“There's plenty of misuses of aid by the government in pursuit of its commercial security and general diplomatic interests and we've been very concerned about that down the years. We're not against aid per se, but really very critical about the misuses of aid not just by Australia but by a number of countries around the world.”
Mr Goodman claimed Australia was heading towards a situation where foreign aid spending would fall to 0.2 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, an amount he described as negligible.
He said other governments in far worse economic shape were spending much more on foreign aid than Australia, such as Britain.
"In Britain, debt is running at 90 per cent of GDP and yet they still hit this 0.7 per cent (of Gross Domestic Product) target of aid,” he said.
“In Australia, national debt is running at about 29 per cent of GDP and yet Australia is going backwards it's halving its aid and directly it even more to national interest concerns."
Mr Goodman said he would like to see much more public debate about the aid cuts that have been made.
"It really is quite an abomination,” he said
“And what really shocks me is the extent to which this has been normalized. This hasn't really hit hard in terms of public debate.
“I don't think it's been much of a public debate about what is happening to the aid program and what this means for the role of Australia in the world really.”
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