There have been repeated cuts to
official development assistance (ODA, defined as "financial aid given by governments and other agencies to support the economic, environmental, social, and political development of developing countries" Cuts have not been limited to aid levels either; in mid-1996, the Howard government slashed the agency's running costs budget by 24% amidst a round of cost-cutting measures. In 2005
John Howard committed Australia to double Australian aid to about $4 billion a year by 2010. At the time of the 2007–08 budget, the Government announced total aid of $3.2 billion and an expectation "to continue increasing development assistance, to $3.5 billion in 2008-09, $3.8 billion in 2009–10 and $4.3 billion in 2010–11". The 2005–06 Annual Report recorded 18 staff in the senior executive service out of a total of 516 public servant staff. 68 AusAID public servants were serving long-term postings outside Australia. These figures do not include locally employed staff outside Australia. Total Australian ODA in 2005–06 was , not all of it administered by AusAID. AusAID administered $1,587 million of expenses in 2005–06 and also had departmental expenses (i.e. under its direct control) of A$78 million. Over most of AusAID's existence, tenders providing services associated with aid programs were generally limited to firms from Australia or New Zealand, or firms doing substantial business in those countries; only in 2005 did the agency liberalise its guidelines to allow firms from the recipient country to apply for some tenders. The agency was considerably more liberal with construction contracts, allowing bidding from any company worldwide, though this has the effect of shutting out many potential bidders from recipient countries. In 2002, as part of an international initiative, AusAID untied aid to
Least Developed Countries. Since the White Paper in 2006, all AusAID procurement was untied (i.e. open to international firms) except for the Australia Indonesia Partnership for Reconstruction and Development (AIPRD). On 18 December 2008, the
William J. Clinton Foundation released a list of all contributors. It included AusAID, which gave between US$10–25 million. In July 2010, under the Labor government, AusAID became an executive agency, separate from the
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The 2015–16 Budget outlined the cuts. With the exception of Cambodia, Nepal and
Timor-Leste, aid to countries in Asia was cut by 40%. The Pacific and
Papua New Guinea (PNG) were only slightly cut, while
Sub-Saharan Africa was slashed by 70%, and aid to the
Middle East was cut by 43%. PNG replaced Indonesia as the largest recipient of Australian aid, receiving $477.4 million in 2015–16. According to research conducted by the Development Policy Centre at ANU, Australia's declining aid expenditure puts it at odds with the aid budget trajectories that many other
OECD countries are following. In 2013, the Conservative government in the UK became the first
G7 donor to reach the OECD's 0.7% of GNI target, increasing its ODA by 27.8% on 2012 levels. In May 2016 the government handed down the 2016/17 federal budget which confirmed the final round of Australian aid cuts, $224 million or 7.4% of the Australian aid program. This was the sixth-largest cut in any one year of the aid program's history. Increases to the aid program over the forward estimates (the next four years) were pegged to the rate of inflation.
Fairfax Media's Matt Wade reported that Australia's aid program, while only about 1% of budget expenditure, has made up around 25% of all budget cuts announced by the government for the period 2013–14 to 2018–19. The
Lowy Institute's Jonathan Pryke reporte that these cuts have seen Australia tumble in international rankings and left Australia at an all-time low when it comes to its aid generosity as measured by aid as a proportion of
Gross National Income. According to the
OECD, 2020 official development assistance from Australia decreased by 10.6% to US$2.6 billion. ==Projects==