One aspect that hasn’t changed between this Australian budget and the last is the downward direction of aid and development funding as cuts of more than seven billion dollars over five years, signalled in last year’s budget, start to bite.
The biggest loser is Indonesia, but the Pacific appears to have emerged largely unscathed, for now.
This morning foreign policy academics, staff from Australia’s foreign affairs department, and civil society groups met for the annual ANU Development Policy Centre aid budget breakfast, where there was a robust question and answer session.
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Speakers: Dr Julia Newton-Howes, CEO of Care Australia; Janet Hunt, deputy director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at Australian National University; Professor Stephen Howes, director of the Development Policy Centre at ANU; Jacqui de Lacy, general manager for global strategy at Abt JTA
