Survey of Australians' attitudes to aid yields mixed results

Transcript

New research from Australia suggests most of the public there is supportive of the majority of the country's aid programme being spent in the Pacific region.

Researchers from the Australian National University surveyed Australians about their opinions on foreign aid and what they expect from their aid programme.

One of the authors, Terence Wood, says that in a nutshell, the research found most Australians support the Government giving aid, even though many don't actually know how much Australia gives or where it goes.

However, he says the public is also fairly comfortable with the idea of reducing the amount of money given.

Jamie Tahana asked him why:

TERENCE WOOD: I think there are two factors, the first of these is probably that many Australians over estimate just how much aid Australia gives. The majority of Australians tended to confess that they didn't know but of those who were willing to hazard a guess, the reality is [many] over estimated and there seemed to be quite a strong relationship between over-estimating aid volumes and a desire to see aid reduced. I think the other factor is probably that there's been quite a lot of discussion here in Australia recently about the fact that the Australian Government is running a deficit and talk about the need to reduce that deficit and I suspect that's led some Australians to be more inclined towards reducing aid levels. Government aid is less than 1 percent of federal spending so if you really have a deficit problem there's no way that you're going to solve it by reducing aid.

JAMIE TAHANA: Do people's views change once they realise how much goes to aid or do they still favour reducing aid?

TW: The answer to that question is not something that we're sure about yet. Some of the survey results that we studied suggest that possibly that might be the case. One survey that we commissioned ourselves returned a result that suggested that providing more information perhaps didn't change people's responses much.
 
JT: And most people favoured it going to the Pacific too - Australia's aid spend being in its neighbourhood.

TW: Yes, and I think that would also be something that would be true if similar surveys were conducted in New Zealand. Both Australians and New Zealanders tend to think of the Pacific as sort of part of the world where we have our most strongest obligations and so in a positive sense I suspect if you asked Australians where they wanted to see aid reduced it wouldn't be the Pacific.

JT: These survey results kind of do reflect what the Australian Government is already doing with its aid programme, isn't it. Does that means it's responsive?

TW: My inclination is to think that there is not a particularly strong direct link between public opinion and aid policy simply because relatively few people vote on aid related matters, however that being said I suspect public opinion provides some constraints on what a government can do and so the fact that Australians are relatively comfortable with reducing aid right now has probably made it slightly easier for the Government to cut aid. Similarly the fact that most Australians are more favourable to aid being given to the Pacific has perhaps played some role in protecting the Pacific from aid cuts.

JT: The point of the article too about people favouring it going more towards humanitarian tasks - does that include kind of a shift we've seen in Australia and New Zealand's aid programmes towards business development and stuff - is it still within that sphere or is it going against what you've found is popular.

TW: Yes, that's an important point I think, and we are actually, one of the things that we've got on our research schedule for some time later this year is we'd like to put a similar question about the purpose of aid to New Zealanders because certainly something that's clearly changed in New Zealand since 2008 has been that an increasing share of New Zealand aid has been devoted towards advancing New Zealand's own interests rather than helping with development overseas and that's also changed a little bit in Australia. And it's kind of heartening to see from the Australian results that to the extent that Australians support the giving of aid, they really want it given altruistically and I imagine that's true with New Zealanders too and so hopefully that provides some scope for preventing aid from being diverted from humanitarian purposes.