Foreign aid cuts spark email spam protest

NEARLY 10,000 people have flooded Joe Hockey’s inbox with angry emails in a bid to derail his budget preparations. But do you agree with their gripe?

NEARLY 10,000 protesters have flooded Joe Hockey’s inbox with emails in a bid to derail his budget preparations.

Protest group Campaign for Australian Aid is encouraging people to ‘interrupt’ Mr Hockey’s budget with an email calling on the government to reverse its foreign aid cuts.

“Think cutting $1 billion from Australian Aid in this year’s budget is unfair?” the website asks. “Interrupt Joe with our fast-e-mailer.”

Users enter their name, email and postcode, and a form email is sent to the Treasurer’s office and cc’ed in to their local member of parliament.

The group has also taken out full-page newspaper ads encouraging people to visit the website. “As you write the budget expect tens of thousands of interruptions from Australians — because we’re for Australian Aid,” the ad reads.

Tony Milne, executive officer of Make Poverty History, said many people had already received emails back from their local MPs in response, but nothing from Mr Hockey’s office.

“Australian aid plays a really important role all over the world, in responding to extreme poverty, in disaster relief,” he said, pointing to the Nepal earthquake as a timely reminder.

“We’re sending the message that we don’t want to see the aid budget cut even further. If the cuts go ahead in this coming budget, we’re going to be the least generous we’ve ever been.”

Australia’s $11 billion cut to foreign aid was among the deepest in the developed world last year, dropping us down from 13th to 14th in the OECD rankings.

Protest group Campaign for Australian Aid is encouraging people to ‘interrupt’ Mr Hockey’s budget with an email calling on the government to reverse its foreign aid cuts.

It drove a rift between Mr Hockey and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop after newspaper reports suggested even more cuts were on the way.

Foreign aid can be a divisive issue, with many on the right arguing the government shouldn’t be sending money overseas when it can’t pay its bills at home.

Mr Milne says it’s not a choice between the two. “The UK has a much greater deficit than Australia and yet they’ve just legislated 0.7 per cent of their gross national income on foreign aid,” he said.

“The consequences of cutting aid are severe and significant. We’ve seen recently agencies like World Vision announce what these cuts are going to mean in terms of real people and programs they had committed to based on former promises from government.”

Child protection programs in India, Senegal and Lebanon have been cut, while education projects in South Sudan and Laos will also go. “It’s shattering. There’s been lots of tears here,” World Vision chief executive Tim Costello told AAP earlier this month.

“We know many of these programs are literally lifesaving.”

Originally published as Foreign aid cuts spark email spam protest