SYDNEY, Feb 27 — Australia is racing to identify the South Pacific’s most pressing funding needs as the United States moves to slash its foreign aid budget, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Thursday.

Crucial food, climate and medical programs in the Pacific islands were left in limbo after US President Donald Trump’s administration announced a 90-day freeze on foreign aid last month.

Wong said Australia had started auditing which Pacific programs were most at risk, with a view to shouldering some of the burden.

But Wong warned it was “unrealistic” to think Australia – already the Pacific’s largest aid donor – could totally fill the gap left by the United States.

Senior foreign affairs official Jamie Isbister said Australia had already started considering how it could step up.

“It is not a one-stop review and done. The situation is fluid and we have to look at how we adapt our programs in response to that,” he told a government hearing on Thursday.

The pair’s comments were made just hours before the United States confirmed it would slash US$54 billion from overseas development and foreign aid budgets – cutting 92 percent of multi-year contracts.

Many aid agencies in the South Pacific have spent weeks bracing for the impact of the anticipated cuts.

Aid-reliant Pacific nations

Disaster-prone, isolated and threatened by rising seas, tropical Pacific island states are some of the most aid-reliant nations on Earth, development agencies say.

The United States has, for years, helped to buy life-saving medicine for tropical disease, combat illegal fishing, and better prepare coastal hamlets for earthquakes and typhoons.

In a foreign policy “snapshot” released on Thursday, the Australian government noted that Trump’s “America First” agenda would see the United States playing a “different role” in the world.

China, by contrast, continues to dish out hundreds of millions of dollars in aid, grants and loans targeted at the South Pacific.

In 2022, China spent US$256 million, according to the Sydney-based Lowy Institute think tank, up nearly 14 percent from three years earlier.

The United States spent US$249 million.

Australia provides the most aid to the Pacific – US$12.9 billion since 2008, according to the Lowy Institute.

Australia’s foreign policy snapshot, meanwhile, warned of turbulent times ahead.

“Authoritarianism is spreading. Some countries are shifting alignment,” Wong wrote in the paper.

“Institutions we built are being eroded, and rules we wrote are being challenged.

“Australians can see a scale of global challenges unprecedented since World War II.” — AFP