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Australian Aid Tracker Shows PNG And Indonesia Receive Most Funds But Pot Is Getting Smaller

New Tracker Shows Exactly Where Australian Aid Is Going To
Australian Aid Tracker

The notoriously complicated sector of Australian foreign aid has been turned into easy-to-understand data visualisations by an independent think tank.

Created by Australian National University's Development Policy Centre, Australian Aid Tracker plots the nation's commitments since the 70s and compares Australia's aid commitment to global contemporaries as well as looking at how our policies have changed.

Research officer Ashlee Betteridge said the site was designed to give people the facts devoid of politics or impending budgets.

"I think Australians consider themselves to be quite generous people, and a lot travel in the region and are familiar with the challenges but when it comes to the aid budget cuts we've seen in recent years by both Liberal and Labor, there doesn't seem to be much outrage," Betteridge said.

"It could be that many don't really understand how much we spend and where it goes.

"We only tend to see aid in the media when it's budget time and they're talking about cuts. If there aren’t any cuts, people don’t seem to see it at all, so this is an opportunity to drill down into those questions like 'how do we compare to other developed, wealthy nations' and it lets us see we've had a big ramping up of aid, but then it's dropped down again."

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