“Charity begins at home."
So said Australian Senator Jacqui Lambie back in April this year in regards to her view that Australian aid spending should be cut in half.
The irony is that the original meaning of the catchcry “charity begins at home” - cited by many before Lambie - urges us to do the opposite.
As Australian social researcher Hugh Mackay explains, rather than excusing us from helping beyond our “home”, the saying is actually a wise observation that learning how to love humankind at home encourages us to apply it elsewhere.
Senator Lambie’s repeated criticism of Australian aid is similarly back-to-front. It centres around the opinion that Australia’s national interest is best served by instead spending that money on our own soil. Senator Lambie believes that voters would disapprove were they aware of how much is being spent through the aid program, saying:
“The average Australian has never been asked the question: how much do you think we should spend each year in foreign aid?”
Well as it turns out, they have been asked a number of times before, and believe the Australian government spends more on aid than it actually does.
For example, in 2011, the Lowy Institute asked Australians “what percentage of the Australian Federal budget, if any, do you personally think should be spent on foreign aid?” The average answer was 12 per cent – ten times the size of the current aid program.
That’s not to doubt the good intentions of the Senator and her newly formed Jacqui Lambie Network (JLN) – their wish is for the aid cut to provide a boost in government spending on Higher Education here in Australia from 0.6 per cent to 1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product. The JLN policy platform presents the reasoning that:
“If the Nordic Countries can fund and deliver the best Higher Education system in the world to their young people for free, why can’t Australia?”
However, the Nordic countries also rank amongst the world’s highest aid donors, with Sweden, Norway and Denmark all exceeding the United Nations’ target of 0.7 per cent Gross National Income (GNI.)
Denmark, 0.85%
Norway, 0.99%
Sweden, 1.11%
Australian aid looks awfully small by comparison – it’s set to reach an historic low of 0.22 per cent GNI next financial year. Halving it wouldn’t increase Higher Education spending to anywhere near the Senator’s target, but would cause immeasurable harm to the communities where Australian aid is working.
The trouble with presenting aid as a choice between spending to benefit others and spending to benefit ourselves is that aid spending can actually do both. For example, the Australian Government’s aid commitment of $250 million to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, will help with the rollout of an Ebola vaccine in West Africa, preventing further outbreaks and in turn protecting health worldwide.
Senator Lambie is at least right that charity begins at home; but if we’re true to our values as Australians – and if we truly care about our national interest – it shouldn’t end there.
This article was written by Jeremy Picone in support of the Global Poverty Project.