The Intel

It may seem there’s an inexorable shift towards the right underway, but it’s more complicated than that. Sure, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia are back, along with ‘might is right’ imperialism, but part of what’s pushing people to the right, is also causing despair to the centre/left. Timid governments captured by vested interests; rising inequality and lack of opportunity; and a rules-based order where the rules don’t apply to the powerful. Seriously address those things and half the air in the right-wing balloon will disappear.

The good news is that for the first time in 30 years, progressive change makers are pushing through internationally. Zohran Mamdani, Ed Milliband, Mark Carney, Catherine Connolly, Francesca Albanese, David Pocock and Helen Haines are not accidental leaders. They differ in their politics, but have risen, despite vehement opposition from the establishment, to change where we’re headed. Hallelujah.

What are the implications for development of this political volatility? The old development program of 1995-2013 is dead and gone. There’s a zombie program that keeps moving because of a skilled team, sometimes doing great things, but its ruptured DNA is 50 years old and infused with paternalism, inefficiency and risk aversion. It is hated by the right, unloved by the left and doesn’t fit the future. Time to start again. Totally rethink what’s needed for our world and the people and communities in the regions where we live to prosper over the next 50 years.

How can that happen when Australia has put all its security eggs in a bottomless basket and is obsessed with impressing an increasingly unreliable ally? The current, community-based, AUKUS inquiry shows we can step outside existing structures. If development NGOs lift their gaze and mobilise their members in alliances with domestically-focused groups, they can be very powerful. The direction we will go, politically and developmentally, is in our hands. Let’s get cracking.

Something changed in the first half of September. Subtly but surely, I sensed the Western world downshifting into a new level of despondency. A pair of bleak op-eds clinched it for me, illustrating how serious thinkers, in different locations and of different political persuasions, were nonetheless feeling the same way: afraid.

Collective emotions matter for international development because, at the most foundational level, the entire enterprise is upheld by hope. We deliver development because we believe that we can help effect change. But when fear, anxiety and uncertainty are the prevailing societal emotions, it becomes both harder to see how we can help effect change and much easier to focus on how change is affecting us.

This despondency is especially afflicting 'traditional Western donors'. In an Ipsos poll of almost 24,000 respondents across 30 countries, the 'big five' donors (Germany, the United States, the UK, Japan and France) were all among the most pessimistic about the long-term future. Gallup International found a similar pattern.

This mood infuses the domestic politics of these countries in ways that influence how they engage in the world. Anxious publics reward leaders who promise to prioritise them. Anxiety also tends to reduce empathy, illustrated by the marked recent reduction in global spending on humanitarian aid. And anxious publics are far more likely to prioritise increasing defence spending at the expense of aid spending, as the former is believed to represent a more tangible, decisive, and effective response to an increasingly dangerous world.

With the global aid regime in an interregnum, it is getting harder to see traditional donors setting the agenda for reform in a post-aid world. Their financial contributions are decreasing, and their hope is running out. Now that we have 'arrived in a new age of disorder', as Margaret MacMillan recently observed, 'any future of cooperation will have to look different.'

Like most Australians, many politicians do not have a clear understanding of international development. Australian aid changes lives, but rarely in view of the taxpayers who fund it. As a result, the individuals and families it supports remain largely invisible. That makes aid an easy target when political sentiment shifts.

For more than a decade, Save the Children has been taking federal parliamentarians to see Australian aid-funded projects for themselves. Funded by the Gates Foundation since 2015, the Australian Regional Leadership Initiative (ARLI) has helped more than 90 parliamentarians of all political persuasions to better understand what international development is all about.

So far, the floor for aid investment has held. In 2025, 26 of 34 OECD donors cut aid, and total aid fell 23 per cent globally. Australia kept its aid budget at around $5 billion AUD, about 63 cents in every $100 of federal spending. Critics note that, adjusted for inflation, it is projected to be about 7 per cent lower by 2029-30 than in 2022-23. Even so, the major parties generally agree it should not be cut, including for the sake of our regional partnerships and also because they know that it makes a positive difference to individuals, communities and nations.

Not every politician who joins a visit becomes a 'champion', but most come away with a clearer perspective on the benefits to both the countries where aid is invested and to Australia of a sound and properly resourced program. Frequently, what stays with them is usually a person they met, a story they heard first-hand or a community they visited. Most accept the strategic case for aid, and having a personal experience of it makes it easier to explain to voters, who, MPs say, generally respond better to local connections and to aid that helps people.

Holding the floor means strengthening that consensus beyond the major parties, as well as reaching newer voices in the parliament with arguments their constituents recognise, including whether aid is spent well and evidence of its impact.