Foreign aid is given from a variety of motives, not as a rule rationally ordered by the donor governments. Some is, and some is not, treated as of high importance. Thus each national aid offering is likely to be a diverse collection of disparate items, hardly worthy of the name ’programme’, with its own idiosyncratic character. Australia’s aid in 1971 has the superficial appearance of being motivated to an unusual degree by geography. This geographical pattern is not accidental. Since the second world war, Australian foreign policy has been much concerned with proximity. Australian aid has also been subject to little public cricitisim, either in principle of in detail. The magnitude, achievements and failures of Australian aid are therefore very largely the resultant of the efforts of officials in the various interested departments.