Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Hansard source

The coalition's approach does contrast quite starkly with the Labor Party's. I'm asked here about that. When you do hear members in high dudgeon, I would just say that Labor's own cuts to overseas development assistance leave little for them to be proud of. In their last 15 months in office, the Labor government slashed $5.7 billion from the aid budget.

Dr Leigh interjecting—

I want to say that again: in their last 15 months in office, Labor slashed $5.7 billion from the aid budget. Who could forget that Labor redirected $475 million from the ODA budget to their failed border protection policies? For the first time we saw an Australian government redirect ODA funding to border protection policies. The House has gone quiet.

In addition to running up $240 billion in debt and deficit, Labor cut aid because of their failure to manage the budget properly. We know that from the diary of a foreign minister, Bob Carr, who said, 'The truth is, you can't run aid on borrowings'—that was a learning that he had from his time in government: you can't run the aid budget on borrowings. This government doesn't have to learn that from experience. We don't have to borrow money to fund the aid budget; we fund the aid budget from our incomings. We have real money attached to it.

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