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Aid budget in a nutshell

(From Ben - keep checking out the feed bar here at morepraxis or his blog to hear more from Ben about the budget) 

The budget has been handed down – an expression, incidentally, that I love. It’s a bit Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments really. Well, if Moses had begun each commandment with “Mister Speaker, in order to support working families…”

I’ll leave it for others to opine on how Swan and/or the Rudd Government have passed their “first big test” with the budget overall. I don’t do tax cuts or infrastructure funds or baby bonuses, just the aid budget… In a nutshell:

• Aid increases to $3.66 billion in 2008/09 – up $505 million from the 2007/08 budget (an increase of 9% in real terms)
• $238 million of this increase is accounted for by the Government cancelling the final tranche of debt owed to us by Iraq
• So, not counting Iraq debt, the real increase is 4.9% on last year’s budget
• Aid will reach 0.32% of Gross National Income (a level it was last at in 1995/96) – up from 0.3% GNI last year, but still less than half the internationally-agreed aid target of 0.7% GNI Australia has committed to
• The budget begins to deliver on the Government’s pre-election commitments to increase funding to water and sanitation ($300 million over 3 years), eliminating avoidable blindness in the region ($45 million over 2 years), and establishing Pacific partnerships for development ($127 million over 4 years for a regional infrastructure facility and $54 million over 4 years for a Pacific Land Program to address land reform challenges)
• There are some further, modest increases in funding for UN agencies and other multilateral bodies

continue reading “It’s an aid budget - the headlines