2025-06-16
Australian Greens Deputy Leader and spokesperson for International Aid & Global Justice Senator Mehreen Faruqi has called on the Albanese Government to urgently increase Australia’s international aid spending, amid revelations from the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) that Trump’s aid freeze and funding cuts have caused a $400m hit to 120 Australian aid projects. Projects to help children and combat climate change have been the hardest hit.
The Greens support calls from ACFID and others to increase aid to at least 1% of the federal budget.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi said:
“Trump’s callous aid freeze and funding cuts are devastating the world’s most vulnerable communities and the Albanese Government is letting them get away with it.
“Australia bears ultimate responsibility for the adequacy and stability of our aid program. We have a moral obligation to ensure vulnerable communities aren’t left behind because of Trump’s cruelty.
“This is about values. While the US, UK and others retreat into nationalist austerity and ignore historic obligations to right the wrongs of the past, Australia must show leadership and significantly increase aid spending.
“Girls forced out of school and facing the risk of child marriage. Families without clean water. People going hungry. That’s the brutal cost of Trump’s reckless decisions — our government can’t just shrug and watch from the sidelines.
“This government must stop raiding one aid program to patch another up and pretending that’s good enough. Australia’s international aid is at its lowest level in history, and that is a political choice by the Albanese Government.”