Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

You have cut the aid budget by $4½ billion, which will hurt the most vulnerable members in communities around our region and around the world. Today I want to reiterate the opposition's commitment to international development. As I said, this legislation is necessary only because the government has abolished AusAID, so it is important to reiterate our aims for international development. We have two goals for the quantum of our international development effort. The first is to increase our overseas development assistance to 0.5 per cent of GNI, and beyond that we believe in working towards a target of 0.7 per cent of GNI. Under the previous Labor government, Australia's contribution to overseas development assistance grew with every budget.

See this speech in context