Australia has been warned it's losing its global influence on the world stage due to lacklustre contributions to foreign aid and humanitarian efforts. "We kind of miss you. We miss Australia. Australia should be big influential, taking your space, helping with humanitarian (disasters)," former prime minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt told ABC's Q&A. Ms Thorning-Schmidt compared Australia's foreign aid contributions to those of the UK.

Contrary to public perceptions, foreign aid represents a tiny fraction of the $4 trillion federal budget. According to the Congressional Research Service, in the past three decades, foreign aid has never accounted for more than 1.4 cents of every dollar spent by Washington. [...] "When you deploy hard power, you actually need more diplomats," says Charles Ries, a vice president at the RAND Corporation who served in diplomatic posts in Iraq and Greece.

The foreign aid budget has been increased so quickly that ministers and officials are ‘struggling’ to spend it properly, a major report warns today. It found that they were ‘unprepared’ for the challenge of spending a 30 per cent increase in the budget last year. The increase followed David Cameron’s controversial pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of the UK’s income on foreign aid.