Commitment would lead to aid spending of 0.22% of gross national income, rather than the party’s target of 0.5%

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Labor has promised an extra $1.6bn over four years for foreign aid, but the Coalition has accused the opposition of failing to fully fund its target for development assistance and an increased refugee intake.

The aid commitment – announced on Friday with the release of Labor’s costings – falls well short of the estimated $68bn over a decade that would be required to reach Labor’s long-term target of 0.5% of gross national income.

The Australian Council for International Development (Acfid) welcomed the commitment, but revealed Labor would only achieve 0.22% of gross national income being spent on aid by 2022-23 and called for an “accelerated timetable”.

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Labor has allocated $96m for increasing the humanitarian intake but the government claims achieving its target of 32,000 refugees by 2025-26 would cost $6bn more over a decade.

Parliamentary Library researcher Henry Sherrell suggested that with a budget of $96m Labor could achieve a refugee intake of 21,750 by 2022-23 but it is “hard to be confident without underlying assumptions”.

The costings also reveal that Labor plans to spend just $30m over three years from 2020-21 on its proposed environmental protection agency, after environmental groups criticised the opposition for failing to spell out the scope of its proposed powers.

The costings state Labor plans to save $2.6bn from reduced spending on contractors, consultants and travel and raise $353m from increasing penalty units for law breaches from $210 to $300.

Labor also committed to spend $997m to “reverse unfair [Department of Social Services] measures and age pension cuts”.

These include reversing or not proceeding with the one-week waiting period for working-age payments, the indexation freeze on the Newstart and Youth Allowance income-free areas, the increase in pension residency requirements, cessation of the pension supplement after six weeks overseas, and cuts to the pensioner education supplement, relocation scholarships and education entry payments.

On Friday, Labor announced that if elected it would spend an extra $1.18bn over four years on overseas development assistance, $380m on the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, $32m on non-government organisations, and $10m on the Rohingya humanitarian crisis.

Aid groups believe Labor’s plan will lift foreign aid to just 0.22% of GNI, up from 0.21% at present or 0.19% under the Coalition’s trajectory.

According to a government analysis, increasing Australia’s aid to 0.5% of GNI requires $68bn to lift it from $48bn over a decade to $116bn.

Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, defended its aid budget, stating the opposition has “made clear we will not be able to undo all of the damage caused by the Liberals’ $11bn in aid cuts in our first term”.

“What we have committed to, and what we will deliver, is to raise aid spending as a proportion of GNI every year that we are in office, starting with our first budget,” she said. “A Shorten Labor government will contribute more to international development assistance than the current government. And we will ensure more of it gets to the people who it is meant to be assisting.”

Acfid chief executive, Marc Purcell, said: “Labor has set a positive trajectory for international development which will leave Australia better placed to address the root causes of crises and challenges that undermine global peace and stability.”

Purcell said the increase would lift Australia’s development spending “out of the doldrums” but it would be “simply be too slow to reach the 0.5% funding target”.

“Australia needs an accelerated timetable if it’s to reach 0.5%, and the internationally agreed goal of 0.7% by 2030.”

World Vision CEO, Claire Rogers, said that while Labor’s pledge was “a good start to rebuilding the aid budget, we have a long way to go before Australia is doing its fair share”.

The finance minister, Mathias Cormann, said that increasing foreign aid to 0.5% of GNI could cost between $68bn and $82bn over a decade and had “not been accounted for” in Labor’s costings.

“Their promise to increase the refugee intake to 32,000 per year, which would cost almost $6.2 billion over the medium term – the document is silent on the medium-term impact of that measure.”