Dr Cameron Hill1
1Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Biography:
Dr Cameron Hill is a Senior Researcher at the Development Policy Centre working on Aid and Development. Prior to joining the Centre, Cameron worked as a Policy and Advocacy Advisor with the Australian Council for International Development (ACFID), as a development consultant and as a Senior Researcher with the Australian Parliamentary Library. Cameron also served as an official with the former Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) for over ten years.
Abstract:
In an era of renewed great power competition, the framing of development assistance as a form of “statecraft” has become ubiquitous in Australian foreign policy speeches and elite discourse surrounding the purposes and priorities of foreign aid.
This paper explores the implications of this framing for Australia’s development assistance. In doing so, it will draw upon Corbett’s (2017) history of Australia’s aid by placing this contemporary framing within the longer history of attempts by aid elites and constituencies to provide international development assistance with “policy legitimacy”.
It will argue that notwithstanding the apparent consensus around statecraft as an approach to policy legitimation, the framework contains several important gaps that limit its utility as a model to adequately understand, explain and communicate Australia’s contemporary aid policy and practice.