Australias generosity to the worlds poor is no longer a newsworthy topic, asAlan Austinreports.

WHEN THEAbbottGovernmentslashedalmost a billion dollars from projected overseas aid allocations in 2014,The Sydney Morning Heraldgreeted this appalling decision with Foreign aid budget plunges to lowest level in Australian history.

A companion piece was titled, Australia's foreign aid cuts: A long-term disaster.

ABC Newsreported the decision thus:

SBSannounced:

The latest figures from the World Bank show Australia had the worst record of all developed countries over the nine years of the Coalition Government, reportsAlan Austin.

This year, however, when aid was reduced even further relative to national income, there was barely a murmur.

Little by little, public interest in aid has declined. There are at least three reasons for this.

Demise of Australias aid agencies

Through the 1970s, '80s and '90s, overseas aid agencies featured prominently in Australias cultural life and mainstream news and other media.

The 1976 evacuation of pro-American citizens from Saigon led toflotillasof vessels, large and small, sailing from Vietnam to Australia, assisted eagerly by the aid agencies in collaboration with theFraserGovernment.

Thirty years ago, World Visions annual40 Hour Faminewas the nations largest community event, with millions of sponsors giving donations to hundreds of thousands of mostly young people who went without solid food for a weekend. This was covered throughout the 40 hours on virtually every radio and television news network and on many variety programs.

This fundraiser generated $7.4 million 1991, when that was a lot of money. This had declined to $2.2 million in 2016 and is now no longer itemised in annual reports.

Through theHowardyears, from 1996 to 2007, most aid agencies shifted their focus from raising funds from the public to seeking government grants. The trade-off in exchange for free public money was that advocacy in the form of castigating governments for aid cuts had to cease. So it did.

World VisionsTim Costelloacknowledgedthis in 2012:

After two years of partnering with developing countries, Australians are all much better off.

Hence, these days, the aid agencies have a much lower profile. Their pleas on behalf of the worlds poor in occasionalmedia releasesrarely command attention.

Fundraising revenue confirms this. World Visions appealsgenerated$126.7 million in 2024, nearly $6 million below the revenue in 2023. Thats down from $242.4 million in2013.

This is the first reason aid cuts are now uncontroversial, which is a great pity, as the agencies actually achieve extraordinarilygood results.

Aid works. Who woodathort?

As recently as 2012, Australiaallocated$32.7 million to development programs in China, $3.5 million to Malaysia, $1.76 million to Peru and $1.5 million to Costa Rica. All four of those countries are now in the UNs top 80 nations by economicadvancementand are now net aid donors.

Thanks to bilateral and multilateral aid programs over the decades, fewer nations now experience dire poverty. Hence, urgent life-saving appeals such as for Ethiopia in 1983, North Korea in the mid-1990s, South Sudan in 1998 and Somalia in 2011 are more infrequent and less gut-wrenching.

This is the second reason cuts to development aid are less newsworthy.

Australias creeping parsimony

TheMay Budgetallocated $5,097 million to aid for 2025-26, an increase of $135.8 million over last year. This is only a smidgeon above the $5,052 allocated inJulia Gillards last budget in 2012-13. As apercentageof gross national income (GNI) which is how generosity is compared historically and internationally this is 0.18%, the lowest since records have been kept. See chart below.

(Data source:Treasury)

Callous Coalition commitment to cut

The third factor fostering frugality is the absence of any Opposition pushback. Before the May Election, the Coalitionsignalledaid cuts of a further $813 million over four years, while quarantining immediate neighbours from reductions.

It would be great if this were one reason the Coalition lost so resoundingly, but we will never know.

Shifting focus of Australias assistance

To their credit, both sides of Australian politics are committed to maintaining support for development in the Asia-Pacific region.

Of Australias top 20 current aid recipient nations, 11 are close Pacific neighbours. Four are in South East Asia and three in Central Asia. Only Gaza and Afghanistan are further away. See chart below.

(Data source:World Bank)

This is a shift from 20, or even ten years earlier. A decade ago, the top 20 aid recipients included Pakistan, Syria, Nepal, Kenya and Zimbabwe. Two decades earlier, they included Iraq, China, Thailand, India and South Africa.

Targets consistently missed

Australias proudest period of good global citizenship was during theWhitlamyears when 0.6% of GNI was allocated to overseas development. With the UNs global target then at 0.7%, this placed Australia among world leaders.

It has been downhill from there, with the Fraser Government reducing the percentage to 0.45% over its term. This was raised through theHawke/KeatingLabor years, but never returned to Whitlams largesse. This pattern has repeated since. Howard reduced aid again, thenRuddand Gillard restored it partially. Abbott,TurnbullandMorrisonslashed it further, thenAlbanesereinstated some of that.

The peak aid body, theAustralian Council for International Development, has now shifted the target from a percentage of GNI to a proportion of the total federal budget. They are asking for 1%. The current level is 0.65%.

Unless there is a miraculous reinvigoration of the aid sector, they will never get it.

Alan Austinis an Independent Australia columnist and freelance journalist. You can follow him on X/Twitter@alanaustin001. He worked in the media team of World Vision Australia from 1996 to 2003.