Foreign aid warning as Coalition mulls overhaul in wake of US, UK cuts

World Vision Australia has warned that cutting foreign aid will have serious consequences for security, as the Coalition prepares shake-up of foreign aid and defence budgets ahead of the election.

Stores are loaded at RAAF Base Amberley onto a C-17A Globemaster III bound for Vanuatu following a devastating earthquake in December. Picture: ADF

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World Vision Australia chief executive Daniel Wordsworth has warned that cutting foreign aid will have serious consequences for global security, as the Coalition prepares an election policy that realigns the nation’s foreign aid budget to ramp up defence spending.

After British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced the largest cut to UK foreign aid in history to lift defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP, Peter Dutton is finalising a foreign aid policy that is expected to rein in spending while enhancing focus on the broader Indo-Pacific region and support for South Pacific nations.

With China aggressively expanding its soft and hard power reach across the South Pacific, both Labor and the Coalition are moving to ensure Australia has adequate funding and strategic presence in the region.

Following the Trump administration’s 90-day review and freeze of USAID funding, Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong has ordered her department to look into any critical funding gaps or implications for countries in the Pacific and Southeast Asia.

Amid a global shake-up of foreign aid, Mr Wordsworth argued “our generosity can be connected to our safety” and that “as much as we want to ‘put ourselves first’ it turns out we are all in this ­together”.

Mr Wordsworth, who returned from the earthquake-ravaged South Pacific nation of Vanuatu on Sunday, said local officials were told that their USAID funding for reconnecting clean water to a school “had been stopped”.

“It was one of thousands of grants cancelled. Now this isn’t the first time the world has cut aid dramatically,” Mr Wordsworth wrote in The Australian.

“In 1990 the Cold War was over and the West stripped aid budgets thinking that they weren’t needed. How did that go? The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, the 1998 Kenyan US embassy bombing, the growing influence of Iraq, the collapse of the Asian economic Tigers, the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, and finally September 11.

“Following that fateful day we saw a steady increase in aid spending to maintain a safer world.”

World Vision Australia chief executive Daniel Wordsworth. Picture: Tony Gough

On criticism of foreign aid, Mr Wordsworth said while some are “making fun of silly supposedly USAID funded projects … this is not what I have seen and been part of for my working life”.

The World Vision Australia chief, who has travelled to war zones, natural disasters and refugee camps across the globe for more than 30 years, said the vast majority of aid funding provided critical frontline support.

“It’s convoys of trucks filled with emergency food supplies driving through the deserts to feed millions. It’s doctors and nurses running health clinics up distant rivers or in overcrowded slums. It’s what keeps the entire health system of Papua New Guinea running,” he wrote.

“And all of this cost less than one per cent of our county’s GDP. Our parents used to call this ‘giving back’ or simply being generous. And through that generosity we create a safer world.”

“So when we think of aid let’s not think ‘we have to put ourselves first’. It’s important we learn from history.

“Everything in our world is connected. Australians are connected to our neighbours in Vanuatu, PNG and even the Congo and beyond. Our generosity can be connected to our safety.”

International Development and Pacific Minister Pat Conroy last week met with new Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat in Port Vila, where he pledged an ­additional $3.2m to support re­construction.

Opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson on Sunday said “we’ll be announcing any policies in relation to foreign aid and our costings in the usual way at the usual time”.

“Of course, our diplomacy is important. Of course, a foreign aid program is important. It’s taxpayers money, and it’s spent in Australia’s national interests. And I think it has a particularly important role to play in our own region in the Pacific,” Senator Paterson said.