The election results are in, and we congratulate all candidates elected to the Australian parliament, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor government.
In the lead-up to the election, supporters like you helped us show all candidates that Australians want a better world for everyone. Thank you.
With your support, Oxfam pushed for an increase in humanitarian aid, a fairer tax system to tackle inequality and greater action on climate change. Here’s what that looked like.
What you helped us achieve
We co-led the Safer World For All alliance, where every Member of Parliament was contacted by members of the public calling for an increase to aid from the historic low of 0.6% of the federal budget. Thousands of emails were sent via the Email Your MP digital campaign, including from hundreds of Oxfam supporters. We met with parliamentarians across the political spectrum to build cross-party support for the campaign. We organised election forums about Australian aid in the Melbourne seat of Wills, the Cairns seat of Leichardt, the Sydney seats of Bradfield and Parramatta, and across electorates in Brisbane, where Pacific communities spoke passionately about the need for climate action.
Safer World for All also joined with the Sudanese community in the electorate of Greenway and the Myanmar community in the electorate of Deakin to speak to candidates about why aid is important to them.
To highlight the need to act on the growing inequality in our world, Oxfam also did a poster and advertising blitz across Melbourne and Sydney. This issue couldn’t be more important with the growing and at times destructive power of billionaires we see in the world today.
What’s next?
The Albanese Government has maintained its commitment to stabilise the aid budget, which is most welcome in these times of crisis. But so far, it has not committed to a much-needed increase.
This increase is needed to help fill the vacuum left by the USA walking away from aid in our region, and to address the growing poverty and inequality in our world.
In the new parliament, Oxfam will be continuing to passionately advocate to the government to tackle inequality and ensure the voices of communities living in poverty and with the impacts of climate change are heard.
With your support, we can we continue to advocate for a fairer and more equal future for all. If you’d like to donate to support this work, you can do on our donation page.
