For the last three years, Australia’s foreign aid budget has been in free-fall. As a proportion of Gross National Income, it has now sunk to its lowest level in decades. Indeed, on every measure of aid generosity that there is, Australia is tumbling down the international rankings. And, if the first budget of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s coalition government is anything to go by, this downward trajectory won’t be reversed. A further $224 million has been cut from the aid budget, leaving aid at just 0.22% of GNI in 2017-18, with no projected increase over the forward estimates.
