Australia will cut foreign aid to help balance the budget, officials said today.
Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced the Government was abandoning one of the Millennium Development Goals that Canberra signed up to at a UN conference in 2000 because it was committed to getting the budget back into surplus.
“While that’s disappointing, it simply reflects the reality that you can’t borrow money to spend on aid,” Carr said.
One of the eight Millennium Goals for rich countries like Australia was having an aid budget equal to 0.5 per cent of national income.
Independent forecaster Deloitte Access Economics estimates the budget deficit for the financial year ending next month will be 11 billion Australian dollars ($ 11 billion).