What Should Australian Aid in the Pacific Look Like after the Retreat of USAID?

Abstract

The 2025–26 budget delivered by Australia’s Labor government is one of the first tangible pieces of evidence of how Australia plans to counter the much-publicised revision of the United States’ (US’) international aid program under the Trump administration and the reduction in foreign aid by the United Kingdom (UK). As the US is only the sixth largest contributor in the Pacific — with $1.1 billion dollars from 2018 to 2022, as opposed to Australia’s $4.8 billion — this move alone ‘won’t break the Pacific’. What it will do is raise questions about what Australia should be doing in the region and how it should do it.