Australia is racing to identify the South Pacific’s most pressing funding needs as the US moves to slash its foreign aid budget, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong (黃英賢) said yesterday.
Crucial food, climate and medical programs in the Pacific islands were left in limbo after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced a 90-day freeze on foreign aid last month.
Wong said Australia had started auditing which Pacific programs were most at risk, with a view to shouldering some of the burden.
Photo: Reuters
However, Wong warned it was “unrealistic” to think Australia — already the Pacific’s largest aid donor — could totally fill the gap left by the US. Senior Ministry for Foreign Affairs official Jamie Isbister said Australia had already started considering how it could step up.
“It is not a one-stop review and done. The situation is fluid and we have to look at how we adapt our programs in response to that,” he told a government hearing yesterday.
The pair’s comments were made just hours before the US confirmed it would slash US$54 billion from overseas development and foreign aid budgets — cutting 92 percent of multi-year contracts. Many aid agencies in the South Pacific have spent weeks bracing for the impact of the anticipated cuts.
Disaster-prone, isolated and threatened by rising seas, tropical Pacific Island states are some of the most aid-reliant nations on Earth, development agencies have said.
The US has for years helped to buy life-saving medicine for tropical disease, combat illegal fishing, and better prepare coastal hamlets for earthquakes and typhoons.
In a foreign policy “snapshot” released yesterday, the Australian government said that Trump’s “America First” agenda would see the US playing a “different role” in the world. China, by contrast, continues to dish out hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, grants and loans targeted at the South Pacific.
In 2022, China spent US$256 million, up nearly 14 percent from three years earlier, while the US spent US$249 million, the Sydney-based Lowy Institute think tank said.
Australia provides the most aid to the Pacific — US$12.9 billion since 2008, the Lowy Institute said.
However, Australia’s foreign policy snapshot warned of turbulent times ahead.
“Authoritarianism is spreading. Some countries are shifting alignment,” Wong wrote in the paper. “Institutions we built are being eroded, and rules we wrote are being challenged.”
“Australians can see a scale of global challenges unprecedented since World War II,” she added.
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