Global values or national interest? Public opinion towards foreign aid in Australia

ABSTRACT This article examines Australian attitudes towards foreign aid and the intersection of these attitudes with broader debates around the purpose and level of the aid program. Drawing on surveys conducted over six decades, we show that the public broadly supports the principle of foreign aid, but are much less supportive of aid expenditure, especially judged against other areas of government spending. Using the 2022 Lowy Poll, we test four hypotheses to explain public support for foreign aid. The results show that both values and interests shape the public’s views of foreign aid spending. The challenge for policymakers is to craft messages about foreign aid which present aid expenditure as being relevant to both the values and interests relevant to the lives of everyday Australians.


Introduction
While Australia's foreign aid program dates back to the 1930s, it is only in recent years that there has been any consistent attempt to try and understand how the public views the issue.In part, this neglect stems from the fact that foreign affairs and defence are secondorder issues over which there is relatively little political conflict and which rarely surface in elections (Chubb and McAllister 2021, 8ff).In part, too, it is due to a perception that the public is likely to know very little about foreign aid, and in any case that these views do not matter as they are unlikely to have a bearing on policy (Milner and Tingley 2013).For these reasons, the postwar years have seen very little, if any, discussion about the extent and direction of foreign aid among the major political parties.
In recent decades, government programs have become more complex and the demands on government expenditure have increased considerably.This has led to more public scrutiny of the utility of foreign aid, and especially the trade-offs in reduced support for other government programs with a more immediate impact on the everyday lives of Australians.On the positive side, greater scrutiny of foreign aid has also been accompanied by higher levels of public awareness around the state of global inequality, and debates around aid efficacy and transparency.This has been accompanied by a closer examination of the goals of Australia's aid program, including how it is delivered and its geographic focus.
In this paper, we examine Australian public opinion towards foreign aid over an extended period using a wide range of public opinion surveys, with a particular focus on contemporary opinions using the 2022 Lowy Poll. 1 The results confirm broad public support for the principle of foreign aid when none of the obvious trade-offs are considered.However, public support for the practicalities of how aid is delivered is more equivocal, particularly when it is placed alongside other demands on government expenditure or placed in the context of specific countries or detailed outcomes.In forming their opinions about foreign aid, we show that the public is most influenced by personal values, reflected in support for social welfare, but that interests also matter, especially through views of China and partisan leanings.
The paper proceeds as follows.The first section outlines the main theoretical approaches to understanding foreign aid, separated into values and interests, and advances four hypotheses.The second section examines the main events in postwar Australian foreign aid policy and traces the trajectory of public opinion using contemporaneous opinion polls.The third section outlines the data and measurement, while the fourth section presents the main results, organised around the four hypotheses.The conclusion places these findings in the context of contemporary challenges to aid policy.

Theorising public opinion towards foreign aid
What is the purpose of foreign aid?This simple question has been at the heart of foreign aid policy since the 1950s.Starting with Morgenthau's classic 1962 article, the debate has been between foreign aid as a driver of economic development versus foreign aid as an instrument of foreign policy (for reviews, see Blair and Winters 2020;Hattori 2001).According to Morgenthau, all forms of foreign aid are political so are contestable in the court of public opinion; the only exception is humanitarian aid, although it too can perform a political function when it operates within a political context (Morgenthau 1962, 301).Within a democratic society, public policy is subject to accountability through elections, so in principle foreign aid should be shaped, at least indirectly, by the wishes of citizens.In practice, however, political parties have until recently isolated foreign aid policy from public debate for fear that public opposition will undermine its sustainability.
Liberal approaches to international relations see foreign aid as a form of giving, with the goal of redistributing wealth and alleviating global poverty.Since aid in this view is a gift, it does not involve repayment and instead represents a form of economic exchange (Lumsdaine 1993).The origins of aid programs, particularly in the United States, are often traced back to the rise of the postwar welfare state and to the notion that there should be a social safety net, in this case transcending national borders (Noël and Thérien 1995).The main difference between welfare and aid is that while welfare is a citizen's right, aid is discretionary (Hattori 2001, 636).Gifting foreign aid also brings with it the risk that economic growth in the recipient country will require continuing aid from the donor country, together with a dependence on foreign resources and skills (Dietrich 2016).If and when aid is withdrawn, economic decline will occur since the country lacks the expertise and resources to sustain continued growth.
In this liberal approach, a foreign aid program is based around the values of the population, who see aid as a moral duty in much the same way as there is consensus over the need for social welfare.Support for spending on foreign aid should therefore be unrelated to other areas of government expenditure since it represents a moral principle rather than a contingent act.Individuals who support welfare spending should also support spending on foreign aid.In addition, we know that individuals who possess higher education adopt a more universalist and benevolent world view, emphasising the welfare and interests of others (Davidov, Schmidt, and Schwartz 2008).We would therefore expect those with university education to be more supportive of foreign aid.This leads to our first and second hypotheses: H1 Individuals who support spending on social welfare will be more likely to support spending on foreign aid compared to individuals who want to spend less on social welfare.
H2 Individuals with higher education will be more likely to support spending on foreign aid compared to individuals without higher education.
In contrast to the liberal approach, realist interpretations of international relations view foreign aid as an essential tool in furthering national interests.This may involve securing access to materials essential to the national economy, gaining new markets for goods, or recruiting new allies with the aim of excluding a global competitor (Bermeo 2016).This realist approach to the use of foreign aid gained momentum during the Cold War, when it was used as a tool of superpower competition.In the post-Cold War period it has been less important, due in part to the donor countries being less strategically motivated in their distribution of aid (Blair and Winters 2020, 130).However, the rise of China, both as an economic and a military competitor, has again focussed attention on national interest as a goal of foreign policy.We might expect that individuals who see China as a threat would be more motivated to support foreign aid spending.This leads to the third hypothesis: H3 Individuals who support countering Chinese influence will be more likely to support foreign aid spending for reasons of national interest compared to individuals who do not support countering Chinese influence.
Viewing foreign aid as a tool of foreign policy brings party affiliation into consideration.Since the level and direction of aid spending is set by the government, party affiliation is likely to play a role in shaping opinions.Research into the underlying factors that predict support for policy programs like foreign aid suggests that political attitudes play an important role (Lumsdaine 1993, 138-80).Political affiliations that prioritise the role of social welfare tend to emphasise humanitarian values around poverty alleviation.Conversely, those opposed to aid spending see it as an unnecessary form of government intervention in the economy (Tingley 2010, 41).Centre-right political views, then, tend to be negatively associated with support for foreign aid spending, while centre-left views cast these programs in a more positive light (Tingley 2010, 47;Wood 2018, 241). 2 This leads to the fourth hypothesis: H4 Individuals with centre-right political affiliations will be less likely to support spending on foreign aid compared to individuals with centre-left political affiliations.
Debate over the purpose of the aid program has been divided between those who advocate global values (the aid program should reflect moral obligations towards others) and those who focus on national interests (the aid program should reflect foreign policy goals).We would expect these divisions to emerge among the mass public, and the four hypotheses listed above are used to test this division using the 2022 Lowy Institute Poll.Before moving to that analysis, we outline trends in postwar Australian foreign aid policy, and inform this overview with contemporaneous public opinion results.

Public opinion and postwar Australian foreign aid
The international debate over the purpose of aid has been reflected in discourse around Australia's aid program.Following the end of the Second World War, the humanitarian ideas that underpinned development programs intersected with urgent security concerns around the Cold War (Sobocinska 2020).In this context, the objectives of Australia's aid program were variously couched in the language of strategic and political objectives, as well as developmental commitments (Ferns 2020b).While debate over foreign aid has been somewhat muted in Australia, this tension between values and interests is nonetheless evident from the 1950s through to the present time.In this section we trace trends in attitudes towards aid from the early days of the postwar program, where survey data is available.
Public opinion polling on Australian attitudes towards aid began in the 1960s and focused on aid towards the program's two main recipients: PNG and Indonesia.The public was divided on both these programs.As Table 1 shows, in the mid 1960s just under half of the public wanted to continue aid to Indonesia, but around four in 10 supported ceasing the aid program altogether.Similarly, in the early 1970s, only 15 percent of the population supported continuing Australia's aid program in PNG, whereas more than half wanted it to be either reduced or stopped altogether.
While the survey data tells us little about the motivations behind these attitudes, we know that the early postwar decades saw the rise of popular humanitarianism, which was motivated by a combination of values and interests (Sobocinska 2019, 511-519).On the one hand, there was a growing public consciousness of the impact of global poverty more broadly, and the impoverishment of Australia's neighbours more specifically, which appealed to a progressive sensibility.For other sections of the public, this newly acquired sense of altruistic internationalism drew on fears about the threat that Australia's highly populated, impoverished and newly independent Asian neighbours might pose to regional security.
For the Australian government, the aid program was almost certainly interest-driven.This was most obvious in the distribution of the aid, which corresponded closely with Australia's Cold War alliances and was motivated by a recognition that socio-political instability and economic underdevelopment were strategic concerns, as well as economic and humanitarian ones (Ferns 2020a, 47;Lowe 1994, 164;Oakman 2000).Justifications for the regional focus of the aid program drew on both humanitarian and national interest arguments; while national interests drove policy, this intertwined with the growing sense of international humanitarianism among the electorate.
The 1970s saw debate over Australian aid revolve around the more technocratic questions of how it should be administered.While the public was not drawn into these debates, two opinions polls conducted in 1975 and 1978, respectively, followed support for the aid program during these years.In 1975, Table 2 shows that four in 10 agreed that aid should be increased; in 1978 the same figure was 26 percent, with almost half saying that it should remain at the same level.While the different questions make firm conclusions difficult, the survey evidence does suggest a change towards a greater acceptability of foreign aid among the public.
During the 1980s, north-south issues started to emerge once again as a subject of public interest.Both at home and abroad, community understandings of global poverty were being informed-and transformed-by the increasing prevalence of televised news reports, which brought the despair of crises, such as the East African famines, directly into peoples' homes.This heightened an understanding of global economic inequity and was accompanied by an increased interest in the role that wealthier nations could play in alleviating these crises.In response, the Australian government commissioned a new report into Australian aid (Corbett 2017, 58).This 1984 review, led by Robert Jackson, made the case that aid should fulfil both the national interest, by providing 'strategic and economic advantage to Australia,' and also address humanitarian needs by enhancing the living conditions of the impoverished (Jackson and Gordon 1985, 13).
Despite the recognition by Jackson and Gordon (1985, 13), of the growing public interest in aid programs, the Australian Development Assistance Bureau (ADAB) appears to have made few public education or engagement efforts.In his examination of the government's efforts to fulfil its own goal of creating community awareness of development issues, Remenyi (1984, 11, 14) found that bipartisan support for the ongoing aid program existed against the backdrop of a paucity of any sort of debate, and that ADAB spent very little of its available information and public relations budget.Despite the Hawke government professing its commitment to achieving the UN aid target of 0.7 percent of GNP, there appears to have been little effort to obtain the type of public support that would have been needed if such a significant increase in the aid budget were to go ahead.
The surveys we do have of this period show that the public was largely opposed to any increase in foreign aid, with a majority of the respondents wanting the aid budget to stay at the same level.Table 3 demonstrates that in 1984, 15 percent wanted a rise in spending, but three times that number preferred it to be decreased, and just over one-third wanted spending to remain unchanged.In 1987, opinions had not significantly altered, with 14 percent opposing an increase in spending, and slightly over half wanting spending to remain the same.These figures are similar to those from 1978, shown in Table 2 above, suggesting that public opinion on foreign aid remained relatively unchanged from the 1970s to the 1980s.
Over the past 25 years, we have seen the appearance of more extensive polling on foreign aid.AusAID commissioned two surveys, conducted in 1998 and 2001, reflecting the emerging importance of aligning aid priorities with public expectations.Since 2006 the Lowy surveys have also periodically examined public support for foreign aid and how it should be allocated. 3Throughout this period there was a large and stable majority in favour of the principle of foreign aid.Table 4 shows that the highest level of approval is in 2001, at 85 percent, and the lowest, 72 percent, at the beginning of the series in 1994 when a strength option was not available.To the extent that there may have been change over the period, it is in the strength of approval, with those strongly approving declining from 58 percent in 2001 to 36 percent in 2014.While these results suggest overall support for the principle of foreign aid, they do not consider contingent choices, that is, trading off the costs of foreign aid against other social programs.
This brief review of the changes in foreign aid policy from the 1950s to the present and the public's response to those changes suggests three conclusions.First, a majority of the public wants aid to either remain the same or to decline.In none of the surveys is there a majority in favour of an increase in aid, and in several surveys (for example, in the 1980s) those wanting an increase are a very small minority of the population.Second, surveys of public opinion for most of this period focused only on support for the aid program, and the question of appropriate funding levels.A lack of engagement with public views of aid has led to a disconnect between government and community attitudes and priorities.Finally, while the public is wary of government spending on foreign aid, there appears to be stronger support for the principle of foreign aid when the question is detached from actual expenditure and the possible impact that more spending on foreign aid would have on other government programs.
These are strong trends, which appear to continue to the present day.In the 2019 and 2022 Lowy Institute Polls, foreign aid comes last as a spending priority.Yet, it is apparent that the public continues to support, at least in principle, the continuation of Australia's foreign aid program.The next section examines this apparent contradiction in more detail, by interrogating the factors that inform public attitudes towards foreign aid.We first provide a description of the data and methods employed in this analysis, before moving to our analysis in which we test the four hypotheses outlined above.

Data, measurement, method
Data.The results are based on the 2022 Lowy Institute Poll, the 18th in an annual opinion poll focused on the public's views on defence, security and foreign affairs.The Lowy polls are the most reliable and comprehensive surveys on Australian public opinion on these topics.The 2022 survey was conducted between 15 and 28 March 2022 using an online probability sample, with a small proportion of respondents (4 percent) also being surveyed via telephone.The survey included 2,006 responses representative of the national adult population aged 18 years and over, with a response rate of 71.7 percent.Full details of the survey methodology can be found in the 2022 Lowy Survey (Kassam 2022, 49-50) and the data are publicly available from the Australian Data Archive.
Measurement.The survey included a battery of five items about government spending; these results are shown in Table 5 together with the comparable results for 2019. 4Attitudes towards foreign aid spending is the dependent variable.As noted above, in both surveys, foreign aid comes last as a spending priority, with less than one in five of the survey respondents wanting to spend more.Indeed, in all cases except for aid, more respondents want to spend more rather than spend less, sometimes by a large majority.The other areas of government spending in Table 5 show similar results between 2019 and 2022 for education, health and social welfare, but a significant increase in support for defence spending.This may reflect concern about increased Chinese military activity in the South China Sea.
Our independent variables are measured as follows.For university education, we use a dummy variable scored one if the respondents reported having a university degree and zero otherwise; 27 percent of the respondents fell into this category.
To measure views about China, two questions are used.First, the Lowy polls have included a question about whether China is an economic partner or a security threat to Australia.Table 6 shows that the public's views have changed dramatically since the question was first asked in 2015.Then, just 15 percent thought that China was more of a security threat; by 2022, that view was held by almost two in every three of the respondents, with the major change taking place after 2018.Second, we include a question about foreign aid in the Pacific: 'Thinking specifically about foreign aid to Pacific Island nations.Would you personally be in favour or against Australia providing aid for the following purpose … to help prevent China from increasing its influence in the Pacific'.A total of 82 percent of the respondents said they would be in favour of aid being used to counter Chinese influence, and 16 percent were against, with 2 percent saying they didn't know.
To measure political affiliation we use the question: 'Which federal political party do you feel closest to?' The parties are coded as Coalition, Labor, Green, and other (which includes minor parties, independents as well as those without a political leaning).In the analyses, Labor is the excluded category.
Finally, we include three control variables.First, age is coded as 18-29, 30-44, 45-59 and over 60, with over 60 forming the excluded category.Second, gender is coded as one for female, zero for male or other.Third, born in Australia is coded as a dummy variable.Method.We rely on ordinary least squares regression methods since the dependent variable is ordinal.We assume that the relationships between the variables are linear and additive.Missing values are treated using the listwise method.

Results
To test the four hypotheses, we estimate an ordinary least squares regression equation predicting support for foreign aid spending.These estimates are shown in Table 7 with the independent variables grouped around four headings corresponding to each of the hypotheses; the estimates are partial coefficients and standard errors.The results show that the strongest effects are associated with spending priorities, and in particular prioritising spending on social welfare.Those who see social welfare as a spending priority are significantly more likely to support spending on foreign aid, other things being equal.There is also a significant negative effect for spending on border protection.This suggests that global values are important in shaping views of foreign aid, insofar as welfare is underpinned by humanitarian concerns, and border protection by national interest ones (Wood 2018).We, therefore, confirm the first hypothesis.
The second aspect to global values is the possible importance of university education, as an attribute that conveys a more universalist world perspective which impacts on views about foreign aid.The results show that possessing a university education is indeed an important predictor of increased foreign aid spending, net of a wide variety of other factors.We, therefore, confirm the second hypothesis.The third hypothesis relates to countering China's influence on Australia and the region, and is measured by two variables.The first variable, seeing China more as a security threat than an economic partner, is a significant predictor of foreign aid spending, but not in the expected direction.Those who see China as a threat are more likely to support less foreign aid spending.This may be because other factors (such as partisanship or education) are associated with threat perceptions, and are more likely to colour perceptions of aid distribution than arguments around national interest.Further research is required to test these assumptions.The second variable, using foreign aid to counter Chinese influence, is statistically significant and in the expected direction.The results, therefore, provide partial support for the third hypothesis.
The final hypothesis relates directly to political attitudes.There are strong effects for political affiliation and as predicted those on the centre-right and who would vote for the Coalition in an election are less likely to support aid spending compared to Labor voters (the excluded category).Green voters are the strongest supporters of aid spending.We, therefore, confirm the fourth hypothesis.
The global values that people hold are clearly important in shaping opinions about foreign aid spending, insofar as they are reflected in support for humanitarian goals, through support for spending on social welfare.Education also plays a role in shaping universalist values which prioritise foreign aid over other types of spending.However, global values are only one part of the story, and national interest is also important, through support for spending on border security and political affiliation.There is also some (partial) support for foreign aid as a tool of foreign policy, in countering Chinese influence in the Pacific.In the conclusion, we discuss the implications of this division in public opinion for foreign aid policy in Australia.

Discussion
Our findings contribute to the existing literature on international trends in foreign aid and its theoretical underpinnings, aligning with and validating the findings of previous studies.The international literature exploring the factors influencing attitudes towards foreign aid has identified various material and cultural variables that shape public preferences (Bodenstein and Faust 2017;Cheng and Smyth 2016;Chong and Gradstein 2008;Nair 2018).Factors such as education and income levels, as well as partisan ideological positions, have been found to be significant predictors of public support for a country's foreign aid program.Additionally, differences in national approaches to foreign aid can be attributed to cultural variations in core values (Diven and Constantelos 2009).The present article extends this body of knowledge by confirming these trends within the Australian context, highlighting that voting populations tend to adapt their domestic political preferences and attitudes when considering foreign aid distribution.
What remains unclear in the literature, is the role that either material or cultural variables play in shaping these preferences (Milner and Tingley 2013, 394), a question that speaks to the difficulty in separating out these various influences.Our review of the historical trends in the Australian context indicates that attitudes were shaped by an intermingling of both values and interests, and that this was reflected both in public debate as well as in elite attitudes.The geopolitical priorities of the Cold War intertwined with a growing global awareness both in government, as well as in the broader population.
More recently, efforts have been made to understand the role that values and beliefs, beyond partisanship and political ideology, might play in driving attitudes towards foreign aid (Bayram 2016;Paxton and Knack 2012;Prather 2011).This research is driven by a belief that support for foreign aid may go beyond ideological leanings or interest-driven constructions, and be prosocial in character, meaning that it involves an ethically-driven impetus to help strangers whose life experiences are far removed from one's own (Bayram and Holmes 2020, 827).We know less about this in the Australian context.The finding that national interest arguments are not directly correlated to preferences around aid policy suggests personal values, beyond partisanship, may be more influential than is often assumed in shaping Australian attitudes towards foreign aid.
Public opinion towards foreign aid has always occupied an ambiguous position within the government, and this observation bears out in the history of Australia's aid program.At the present time, while continued aid expenditure requires at least tacit public support, other factors are more important (Wood 2015).Research has shown that in democratic donor countries, public opinion has some effect on decision making around aid programs.In their study spanning 14 years of legislative behaviour in the US, Milner and Tingley (2010) found that members of Congress were not only aware of the preferences of their constituencies when it came to foreign aid, but that they tended to vote in accordance with these preferences even in the absence of any overt pressure to do so.In an earlier, cross-national study, Mosley (1985, 380-387) found that there is some evidence that governments tend to respond to public pressure by altering the quality (rather than the quantity) of aid provided.
In Australia the effect of public attitudes towards aid appears to be minimal, and where it exists, acts as a brake on the scope and extent of aid expenditure.As we have shown here, while the public approves of foreign aid in principle, support is nevertheless contingent on an ever-changing mix of what other spending priorities exist for government, on what services aid will be spent on, and on the partisan leanings of the public.This makes for an insecure basis for any government spending program.It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that both major parties have rarely sought to politicise foreign aid since that could threaten the program's viability.

Conclusion
Since at least the early 2000s, debates among analysts and commentators have tended to revolve around the question of how Australian aid can service Australia's diplomatic and security interests, rather than the question of how development assistance can best serve the region's developing nations and contribute meaningfully to poverty reduction (Rosser 2016, 127).Since the challenge for aid professionals and policy experts is how to augment and deepen public support for aid as a non-discretionary budget item, and whether specific types of information might change these views, the question of how the public perceives the role of aid in the context of the broader picture of the country's values and interests is an important one.
The government has tended to emphasise national interest arguments by focusing on the benefits that aid expenditure can bring to Australia and its citizens.However, the results presented here suggest that government priorities do not correspond with public views around the nature and purpose of the aid program.Instead, the results suggest that aid directed at disaster relief and climate change mitigation will attract the strongest public support, the former because of its humanitarian nature and the latter because of the public's increasing awareness of the direct effects of global warming on everyday life.Recent studies by Wood, Hoy, and Pryke (2021) have also found that, when presented with national interest arguments around China's rise, while the public did become more likely to oppose cuts to the aid budget, respondents did not believe that this aid should be used to promote the national interest (instead preferring that the aid be focused on helping the poor).Another study by Wood (2018) found that appeals to the national interest were not as strong as elite discourse suggests it should be, and that respondents expressed a preference that aid advance developing countries rather than Australian interests.These considerations need to be integrated into the public presentation of Australia's aid program.
The factors that influence Australian views of the country's aid program are many and complex.The elasticity of public views on aid spending is still poorly understood (Wood and Hoy 2022), and it is important to know whether it is possible to shift views, not just on the levels of spending, but on the purpose of the aid program.Elite appeals to the national interest are not strongly reflected in public preferences, and future studies could focus on whether interventions from the aid sector or representatives from developing nations might be more efficacious in shifting views.
): 'Do you think we should, or should not, continue to help Indonesia with foreign aid?' (1970-71): 'Australia gives New Guinea $100 million a year.After New Guinea is independent, should Australia continue to give $100 million a year-or reduce it-or stop it?'SourcesAustralian Public OpinionPolls 1836-1851, July-September 1965; Australian Gallup Polls, 221, 1971.
(1975): 'Australia should give more assistance to poorer nations than we do at present.' (1978): 'Do you think federal government aid to poor countries of the world should be increased or decreased or kept as it is?' Sources Australian GallupPolls, December 1975, July 1978.

Table 3 .
Spending on Foreign Aid, 1984 and 1987.'Doyou think we are spending far too much, too much, about the right amount, too little or far too little on foreign aid.
' (1987): 'Here are some more areas of government spending.Please show whether you would like to see more or less government spending in each area by circling a number after each question.Remember that if you say "more", it might require a tax increase to pay for it.…foreign aid?' Sources National Social ScienceSurvey, 1984 and 1987.

Table 5 .
Government Spending Priorities, 2019 and 2022.If you were making up the budget for the federal government this year, would you personally increase spending, decrease spending or keep spending about the same for … .'Don't know responses are omitted.Sources Lowy Polls, 2019 and 2022.

Table 6 .
China as Economic Partner o-2022.rity Threat, 2015-2022.In your own view, is China more of an economic partner to Australia or more of a security threat to Australia?'  Sources Lowy Polls, 2015-2022.

Table 7 .
Explaining Support for Foreign Aid (OLS Estimates).< .01,* p < .05.Ordinary least regression estimates showing partial coefficients (b) and (in parentheses) standard errors predicting support for foreign aid spending.See text for details of variables and scoring.Source Lowy Poll, 2022.