Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week I was visited by young people from Micah Challenge, and I know that they visited most members here in parliament. They raised two issues with me. One was that we need to increase the level of our overseas aid and the other was that Australia needed to ensure that it has realistic goals in relation to increasing our emissions pledge. Both are things that I support.

Since the Abbott-Turnbull government was elected, the overseas aid budget has been cut by $11 billion and is now the weakest in Australia's history. This is devastating news for the poorest nations. Under the Abbot-Turnbull government, by 2016 we will be spending just 22c in every $100 of our national income on foreign aid. Over the next decade that is set to decline to 18c in every $100. This is the lowest level of overseas aid in Australia's history.

Micah Challenge brings people to Canberra from all around Australia. The passionate young people who came to visit me acknowledge that great progress has been made with the Millennium Development Goals. They highlighted to me that in just one year, 2013-14, Australian aid helped to vaccinate more than 2.3 million children, give 2.9 million more people access to safe drinking water, increase access to improved sanitation for over one million people, and get 1.3 million more children into school.

I find it really disturbing that the cuts in our aid will impact on so many countries and so many people. More than two billion people worldwide live on just $2 a day, and Australian aid has been used not only to help with immunisation programs but to facilitate microbusinesses and to help countries and people out of poverty. We need to continue our commitment to those Millennium Development Goals, and we also need to be very active and support our neighbours in the Pacific in relation to climate change and sea level rises. This is an important issue and it affects many people worldwide.