This week on GeoPod, Tenjin Consulting's Alexander and Georgina Downer talk to Bridi Rice, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Australian Council for International Development, about the geopolitics of international development. 

Australia is a generous donor country. In the 2020-21 budget, Australia committed $4 billion to overseas development assistance. This funding was particularly focused on the Pacific and Southeast Asia, reflecting Australia's geography and areas of strategic interest. Another $408 million was earmarked for the Covid-19 response to help Pacific nations, Timor Leste and Southeast Asian nations vaccinate their populations and rebuild their economics.

Aid is an essential tool of statecraft for donor countries like Australia. Aid contributes to the soft power of the donor country but it also delivers economic, human and political development, as well as resilience to internal and external shocks.

The geopolitics of aid has never been more important for Australia. We have witnessed "chequebook diplomacy" in the Pacific where China and Taiwan trade aid for recognition. But Australia is not an innocent bystander when it comes to chequebook diplomacy. One only needs to look at the increase in Australian aid delivered to Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa during the period Australia was campaigning to secure a seat on the United Nations Security Council to understand this.

We ask Bridi to reflect on the 2014 merger of the former Australian aid agency, AusAid, with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Australian attitudes to aid spending. Australian Government spending on aid has fallen to just 0.22% of Gross National Income at the same time as defence and intelligence budgets have increased. This has seen a securitisation of our international engagement at a time when international relations are more and more contested. Public sentiment is still in favour of aid and even more so now that the globe is dealing with the fallout of Covid-19.