Australians like to think their government is a big-hearted foreign aid donor.

A recent opinion poll found voters believed our overseas aid budget to be about 10 times bigger, on average, than it actually was.

In fact, Australia has never been an especially open-handed donor compared with many other wealthy countries. And during this term of government, foreign aid spending has shifted from moderately generous to downright miserly with little prospect for improvement any time soon.

I would have thought that those that complain about our aid and how money should go towards Australians in need might have something to say. Maybe their claims of how overly generous our nation is does not shape up or more likely its just something they said to score a cheap point.