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Opposition Leader Tony Abbott must come clean on whether he is proposing to cut spending to Australia’s aid program, Oxfam Australia said today.

One good news story to come out of Tuesday night’s Federal Budget was the increase to $4.3billion for Australia’s international aid program. You might not have realised this was a good news story because it was yet another example of the Rudd Government’s failure to communicate its achievements to the Australian public.

Whether you believe them or not, threats by the mining sector of a mass exodus overseas as a result of the resource rent tax expose a glaring gap in how Australian companies conduct business around the world.

This Budget shows the Rudd Government is delivering on its 2007 election commitment on aid spending, but has fallen short of meeting its international climate change commitments, international aid agency Oxfam Australia said.

The Close the Gap campaign today welcomed ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope’s public commitment to end Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health inequality in the ACT.

The Rudd Government must use some of the pot of money left from its ETS backflip to help international efforts to tackle climate change, rather than redirecting international aid to help pay for Australia’s global responsibility.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s pledge to match the Federal Government’s commitment to foreign aid spending is welcome, but his plan to shift money away from Africa is a concern, international aid agency Oxfam Australia said today

Oxfam is calling on Australian Treasurer Wayne Swan to push for a small tax on banks to raise revenue to help millions of people, at the G20 finance ministers meeting in Washington today (23 April).

An extensive study of rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) commissioned by Oxfam and conducted by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative shows that 60 percent of rape victims surveyed were gang raped by armed men and more than half of assaults took place in the supposed safety of the family home at night, often in the presence of the victim’s husband and children.

The large drop in Australia’s overseas aid spending, revealed in new OECD figures announced overnight, is very concerning, international aid agency Oxfam Australia said today.