The Australian government is consulting Pacific nations to assess the “devastating consequences” of the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid and considering what additional support it can provide ahead of next week’s federal budget.
In a letter to a Liberal MP concerned the freeze could cause “irreversible” damage to Pacific communities, the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, said Australian diplomats were discussing its impact with US government officials.
“We are working with our country, regional and global partners to understand the potential impact of the US administration’s decision to pause its foreign aid,” Wong said in a letter to Liberal MP Warren Entsch earlier this month. “[We] will continue to engage with the US on key issues as it conducts its review.
“The Australian government, including through its diplomatic network, is also engaging with countries in our region to determine how we can help them manage impacts from the pause.”
Entsch wrote to Wong in February warning the 90-day freeze was undermining global efforts to fight tuberculosis, which have been heavily reliant on US funding.
“The stop work order is already having devastating consequences with active case finding efforts, contact tracing and treatment support suspended in multiple high tuberculosis burdened countries,” Entsch said in the letter.
“Organisations are already laying off hundreds of trained, dedicated staff members because they are unable to make payroll this month without US funding. The current interruptions to tuberculosis services therefore not only halt further progress, but actively undermine progress to date.
“Some of the damage will be irreversible.”
Entsch, who is the co-chair of the Australian Tuberculosis Caucus, a bipartisan group of politicians who raise awareness of the disease and its impact, urged Australian diplomats to “show the new US administration that investing in health aligns with their goals of enhancing American safety and prosperity”.
Wong said Australia was determined to be a “partner of choice for our neighbours” and stressed this was “fundamental to our region’s prosperity, stability and security”.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, criticised the Trump administration’s decision to pause foreign aid after an address to the Lowy Institute on Thursday.
“I think it is detrimental to the collective interests in the region and I hope that there can be a discussion between our governments about a sensible pathway forward in that regard,” Dutton said.
Last year, a Lowy Institute report found China had renewed its efforts to curry favour with Pacific island nations after charting a “resurgence” in Beijing-backed aid and infrastructure funding.
“Beijing has emerged from a pandemic-induced lull with a more competitive, politically targeted model of aid engagement,” the thinktank said in the November report.
Tim Costello, the chief executive of Micah Australia, a coalition of church groups advocating for development projects, said allowing China to address the shortfall in US aid would be a strategic “disaster” for Australia.
“We have a kneejerk reaction to increase defence spending when China sends warships down our coast, but it’s just as scary to say: ‘let’s let China fill the US aid vacuum’,” Costello said.
Analysis by Micah Australia found increasing foreign aid from 0.68% of the federal budget to 1% would help immunise another 6.6 million people in our region, enrol 164,100 children in local schools, and provide “164,500 services to women and girl victims/survivors of violence”.
“In a time of rising defence spending, a stronger aid program is not a luxury – it’s a smart, strategic investment in a stable and secure region, which is ultimately in Australia’s national interest,” said Micah Australia’s director, Matt Darvas.
Cameron Hill, a senior researcher specialising in foreign aid at the Australian National University, said there was scope to increase funding given “large cuts to aid under the previous Coalition governments”.
“The only countries that have seen an increase to aid over the last decade are those in the Pacific and Timor-Leste,” Hill said. “So, there’s not much left to cut beyond our immediate neighbourhood.
“I can’t see either major party cutting aid to these countries any time soon given the anxieties about China.”
