Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before parliament comes back again many of us will attend Anzac Day ceremonies. Last year I was fortunate to visit Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world. Over 10,000 soldiers are buried there. In the centre of the cemetery are the pillboxes that the Australian troops captured when they stormed there. But, standing there and looking out across the fields, what you failed to realise is that there are the bodies of 500,000—half a million—men in the two-mile radius. It was the battle known as Passchendaele.

As this is the last sitting day before we head to the budget, I am reminded that our foreign aid budget has dropped from $5 billion to $3.8 billion. There are 60 million people on the move and 30 million of those are children. The decisions that we, the collective governments of the world, make usually end up being peaceful decisions or decisions that end up with the death of many, many millions of people.

I would say that, as we think about our budget going forward, it is time we started to have a real discussion about what the Australian government's response is going to be to contributing to the world in the way of aid rather than contributing to the world in the way of defence. I think that we should start to increase our foreign aid expenditure from $3.8 billion up. The world seems to be arming itself. We should break that trend and actually become more compassionate and more responsive.