Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

In relation to budget questions, there's been a lot of 'rule in, rule out'—which is a usual political process in the lead-up to the budget, and I can remember both Senator Cormann and Senator Birmingham standing here and saying, 'Well, these decisions will be made, and they will be made in the budget, and the budget will be handed down on'—whatever day it was at that time. So, I'm not going to do the 'rule in, rule out' thing. But what I would say to the senator is that we made a very clear and costed election commitment to additional funding for ODA, which was announced in the election campaign. We did that—in excess of a billion dollars over four years. That included additional ODA to the Pacific, additional ODA to South-East Asia and an additional $32 million to the Australian NGO Cooperation Program, known as ANCP. We did that because it was the right thing to do for Australia. Our security lies in our region, and we have a national interest in doing what we can to make the region more stable and secure. We will deliver that commitment.