As a global centre for social justice and advocacy leadership the Edmund Rice Centre has welcomed Australia’s renewed commitment to international development through its 2.7% increase in the 2025-2026 budget for Official Development Assistance (ODA), bringing it to a total of $5.097 billion. It comes as especially good news at a time when other nations are cutting their foreign aid budgets despite increased levels of conflict and environmental disasters throughout the world.
However, the 2025-2026 budget only represents 0.18% of Australia’s Gross National Income – its lowest level yet and renders our nation one of the most penny-pinching of all the OECD donor countries when it comes to international aid.
Edmund Rice Centre Director ’Alopi Latukefu said Australia is acting in its interests when it is helping to strengthen health and education systems in the region, when it is improving food and water security, social protections and strengthening institutions that in turn support locally led development outcomes. “This focus is particularly important as the US and the UK have vacated the international development space, and countries are scaling up defence budgets instead of focusing on humanitarian assistance and poverty alleviation. Yet, well-managed and impactful foreign aid programs help to decrease political tensions.”
Likewise, at a time of ongoing attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion in the US, Mr Latukefu said it is “now more than ever important to double down our efforts in supporting representation, gender equality and assistance to marginalised and discriminated groups in our region. This includes committing to a rights-based approach against discrimination and, on the 80th anniversary of the UN, strengthening the legal architecture that supports our much-needed international rules-based system.”
The Director of the Edmund Rice Centre also welcomed the increase in pay rates for early childhood educators and nurses, however noted the need for reforms in the housing sector to help reduce growing inequality in Australia. He applauded the allocation of funding to make healthy food cheaper and more accessible in remote Indigenous communities, whilst highlighting the ongoing need to increase funding for Indigenous culturally safe legal aid and law reforms when it comes, for instance, to the high rates of incarceration of Australia’s First Nations peoples.
Climate change is also largely invisible in this budget, noted Mr Latukefu, allowing for ongoing tax benefits for the fossil fuel industry in Australia and further greenhouse gas emissions despite people suffering from ten years of record-breaking temperatures, with deadly heat waves, record flooding and bushfires.
“Given the state of the world, the upcoming federal election is one of the more consequential elections our country has ever experienced. Now is not the time to be content with dangling low-lying fruit,” said Mr Latukefu. “This is the Government’s opportunity to show leadership and ambition.”