Foreign Aid
Britain has recently decided to stop overseas aid to India. It had become untenable for the Government to take money from British taxpayers to subsidise a nuclear power with a space program.
It’s time Australia took a similar, hard-nosed approach to overseas aid. If the Asian Century means anything, it means Australians realising that the hubris, paternalism, and sentimentalism reflected in an old style ‘first-world helping out the third-world’ aid program is anachronistic.
Mutual economic and social benefit must be the criterion for any investment of Australian funds in another country. Leveraging and increasing Australian strengths must be the strategy.
Continue reading "Endless cash donations do nothing to aid Asia" »
One criticism frequently levelled against the media is that we habitually devote acres of space to disasters involving ourselves and other first world nations and relegate bigger catastrophes in the developing world to a couple of paragraphs on page 44.
It is true that this happens but I don’t regard it as particularly evil. It is no different from the fact that a television station in Guatemala will run big on an earthquake in nearby Nicaragua yet ignore or downplay something much worse which happened in Australia or Indonesia or Thailand. Proximity and familiarity motivate these news judgments. I doubt the Queensland floods or the Victorian bushfires were on the front page of many newspapers in Africa.
The coverage of Hurricane Sandy in Australia this week has been massive, and understandably so, as we have a close relationship with America, many of us have holidayed there, many of us have lived or do live there.
Continue reading "iPhone hell in the Frankenstorm of the Century" »
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Cam says:
“US death toll from Sandy rises to 92” .... Read more »
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marley says:
@Rita - I agree entirely with all with your points about Yasi (Brisbane was a slightly different matter). But my point really was that the American system worked well for a far more heavily populated region, and there are always lessons we could learn. The assumption that their experience has… Read more »
The government has actually borrowed billions to buy a vanity pulpit for Kevin Rudd.
But it’s not going to be occupied by him – unless of course there is another coup by the faceless men and the ALP decides after all the nasty things they said they want him back.
Until then Julia Gillard and Bob Carr will use their very expensive new toy, the vanity pulpit, to bore us with endless “initiatives” on world issues. The fact is the Russians and Chinese who actually run the Security Council will ignore each of them.
Continue reading "Congrats on your useless billion dollar seat" »
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Achmed says:
@JamesP….in terms what has been said about superannuation there is misinformation from Rosie. Superannuation funds that are below the limit or not active are held by super funds and even though there is no activity in the account they still charge the administration fees and collecting interest on the money,… Read more »
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Robert S McCormick says:
Like Australia’s continuing presence & the ever-increasing number of totally unnecessary deaths of young people on Afghanistan, this seat on the un-democratice UN Security Council is a monumental waste of time & money.Gillard will, as is usaual for this poltical opportunist, offer that seat to her nemesis: Kevin Rudd. He’ll… Read more »
Haiti seared itself onto our consciousness on 12 January 2010. The deadliest earthquake ever to hit the region reduced much of Port-au-Prince to rubble. Buildings with concrete slab roofs in squatter settlements perched on the side of steep hills concertinaed under the stress - leaving their inhabitants no chance.
Speaking to those who experienced the earthquake, the real shock came in the following days when the full extent of the damage was realised. When it was finally tallied the startling reality was 316,000 people lost their lives in a population of only ten million.
Two years on and there is still rubble throughout Port-au-Prince. Last week I watched, along with many other sombre onlookers, the beginning of the demolition of the presidential palace which was irreparably damaged in the earthquake.
Continue reading "You should be proud of where your aid dollars go" »
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the cynic says:
Rose…... I also think the idea of ensuring every Australian is taken care of first is the first goal we should embrace before we throw aid money at places. When one sees first hand as I have, the corruption and other waste in aid money and resources you have to… Read more »
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john of solomon says:
Rose, what a load of codswallop I have lived in third world countries all recipients of Australian Aid for the past 42 years and although some of the aid may accomplish the ends you have mentioned, much of it is wasted on consultants and projects that achieve little with the… Read more »
Ten million children vaccinated. 2.5 million people with access to safe drinking water. And 30 million people supported through humanitarian crises like famine and war. These are some outcomes to be delivered this year, by Australia’s Budget for overseas aid.
This year, Australia’s aid budget will rise – by $300 million, to a record $5.2 billion. And it will go on rising - reaching $7.7 billion in three year’s time.
In dollar terms our aid budget is the largest in our history. As a percentage of Gross National Income, it’s at 0.35%, rising to 0.5% by 2016/17. That’s just one year later than planned – a pretty good outcome in a tough budget year.
Continue reading "Our Budget blade didn’t cut aid, it’s being paid in spades" »
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S5MiEy Very informative post.Much thanks again. Fantastic. Read more »
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Tet says:
Charity starts at home. I would rather see my tax money going to help out a man living on OUR streets than to a country who cannot control their ability to procreate despite having no means to support they 15th child. Also, i wonder what percentage of this aid actually… Read more »
The Australian aid sector’s fury at the aid budget cuts announced on Tuesday has been focused on the dollar figure that the Government has (or rather, hasn’t) allocated to foreign aid.
But there’s another reason to be angry.
Alongside its much-smaller-that-promised aid budget, the Gillard government delivered another announcement. “Australia is deepening its engagement with effective multilateral organisations including the Development Banks,” Foreign Minister Carr blogged proudly on Wednesday.
Continue reading "What happened to the Govt’s promise to help the poor?" »
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Dave Charlesworth says:
The grammar Nazi’s are out today! I take it you didn’t agree with the comment SDA? Read more »
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Scotchfinger says:
Yes we should impose trade sanctions for the ol’ Rusty… Read more »
Every 20 seconds, a baby or toddler will die from a disease that can be prevented by a simple vaccine. Most of these deaths happen in developing countries because children go without the immunisations and lack access to other health services that parents in wealthy nations take for granted.
As usual, it is the poorest children in the poorest countries who are least likely to be immunised, and it is those same children who are at the greatest risk of being exposed to life-threatening, preventable diseases like tetanus, polio and measles.
This week, April 21-28, is World Immunisation Week, and around the world we acknowledge that all children have the right to life and health, no matter where they live.
Continue reading "We must immunise our aid budget from amputation" »
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RyaN says:
@Caedrel: Yet they still use “$2 a day” crap disrespecting the people. Read more »
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Alan says:
10 years living in West Africa is where I got my “statistic” from. It’s real and if any of the NGO’s tell you otherwise they are lying. Read more »
Australians do not need to be told that today is World Water Day to remember that water is both a giver and taker of life. This is the driest populated continent and we know well the impact of both floods and droughts.
But how many people are aware that billions of people across the world still lack access to a hygienic toilet, a tap and soap? Or that the failure to provide sanitation and safe drinking water causes about 4000 children to die every day?
The preventable diseases caused by poor sanitation cause more child deaths than malaria, measles and HIV/AIDS combined. Almost one in three people live in unsanitary conditions.
Continue reading "Water everywhere, and still millions without sanitation" »
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marley says:
@Little Joe - well, at least a few of us care. I’ve spent a bit of time in Africa and the sub Continent, and seen some of conditions there. We don’t know how lucky we are in places like Australia, not even to have to think about things like clean… Read more »
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Little Joe says:
@ Marley The Punch has pushed this to No.12 on yesterday’s stories, the story has only 19 comments and about half of them are ours .....it appears that people do not care. Read more »
The Mexican Ambassador to Venezuala was recently kidnapped. A ransom demand ensued and after five or six hours he was released.
The incident happened right outside his house in what was thought to be a safer part of town. The attack was highly co-ordinated with three teams of assailants using sophisticated and powerful weaponry.
While no-one was hurt, the episode was traumatic and by no means a one-off incident. It has left the diplomatic community in this city thinking intensely about how to deal with this ever-present danger in as professional a way as possible.
Continue reading "Foreign diplomatic service a deadly serious business" »
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jan says:
Thank you Richard for recognising our efforts. Now please convince your colleagues to grant us better funding to increase DFAT officers overseas to better serve Australia. Those of us who are currently overseas, face all sorts of differences, challenges, hardships, dangers etc to varying degrees. But most of us, if… Read more »
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PhilD says:
The domino effect didn’t happen because the reds were bankrupted and divided, and the Khmer Rouge Maoist dominos fell on their own Cambodian people and over the border into Vietnam. Big mistake. Unfortunately some lovely people I knew were massacred. and that’s why it is so Alcotrel. Read more »
Once again Africa is gripped by a catastrophic famine. As developed countries and NGOs scramble to mobilise aid, we are told incomprehensible numbers of people face a ghastly death by starvation, including hundreds of thousands of children.
It can make you despair. Sometimes we feel like turning away, we seem so powerless and the problems so entrenched and repetitive. Giving money can feel pointless; commercial TV news hardly mentions the crisis, guessing it will have viewers reaching for the remote control.
But there’s another story about Africa many Australians might find very surprising.
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Floods, earthquakes, droughts and cyclones are becoming more frequent around the world and the number of people affected by them is growing. In developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand we are experiencing firsthand the demands these events place on those directly affected and on those responding. In developing countries these challenges are amplified.
As Australia’s aid program continues to grow – in line with the bi-partisan commitment for aid funding to reach half a per cent of our national income by 2015 – it will become even more important to make sure we are using this money effectively. The current Independent Review of Aid Effectiveness, led by Sandy Hollway, is timely, needed and most welcome.
Australia’s aid program has experienced an unusually high profile in recent weeks. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott’s proposal to ‘defer’ a $448 million aid program to Indonesian schools – and the alleged ructions in Shadow Cabinet over it – generated a lively public debate.
Continue reading "Four very good reasons why every aid dollar is needed" »
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Fiona says:
A case of feminist man-bashing? Its a fact of the injustice of global poverty. These statistics can be found here http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii/ Your final paragraph is one of the more worrying things i’ve read online in a while-not only does it highlight your lack of intellectual curiosity as to the impact… Read more »
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Olivia says:
Less advocacy, more substance: http://aidreview.lowyinterpreter.org/ Read more »
Public money should not be spent on promoting religion.
We don’t need religious school chaplains. State schools should be well and truly secular. Religion is a choice, not an educational need. Taxpayers should not foot the bill for others to indulge their beliefs.
Except in Indonesia.
Continue reading "We should fund Islamic schools for our own good" »
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Over recent years, Australia has doubled its financial commitment to foreign aid.
Yet our aid program has remained starved of attention from the government, media and community at large.
On Tuesday, Kevin Rudd sought to rectify this by announcing a five-month independent review of the effectiveness of Australia aid.
Continue reading "Australia’s foreign aid is starved of attention" »
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steve b says:
Well I’m in the minority here. I have no problem with the oz government spending 0.3% of the GDP on our less fortunate neighbours. It would be nice if more of it went to where it was intended - rather than milked by the leeches in the chain. NGOs (non-governemt… Read more »
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Frustrated in Pakistan says:
I’m an Australian aid worker in Pakistan at the moment, and I should stop reading comment threads like this as the close-minded and ill-informed attitudes are so depressing. Yes, millions of dollars are handed over to governments that misappropriate funds (Of the US$500m that the US just gave to Pakistan,… Read more »
It has a population of 6.3 million. It is one of Australia’s two really large recipients of aid.
We are its largest trading partner. It is our 19th. It’s about 400 times closer to us than New Zealand.
Yet for some reason our media and public discourse doesn’t seem to rate the importance of Papua New Guinea. On this website a search on Papua New Guinea yields 23 hits compared to 35 for Spain, 76 for South Africa and 94 for Iran.
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Fred says:
Why are we the big wealthy neighbour not helping more to integrate the 10 000 asylum seekers on the border with the west? Read more »
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stephen says:
Are you suggesting that we are part of a larger ignorance : America and South America, and England and Ireland etc ? Well I think you’re right, and I’ve often said that we ignore these closer states at our disadvantage. One of the signs of cultural ignorance (and indeed immaturity),… Read more »
Although I am closely involved in the aid and development sector, I was pleased to read Monday’s News Limited critical pieces by Steve Lewis in the Daily Telegraph and the Adelaide Advertiser.
Negative publicity is never good for any sector. However, the recent pieces in Australia’s newspapers are a positive sign of the fact that Australians are engaging with the global movement to take action on extreme poverty.
In my role as a development educator, I have been witnessing this change in our societal perspective on a daily basis. Australians are no longer simply asking how many aid dollars are being allocated to help the billions of people living in extreme poverty: we are now questioning the effectiveness of this spending. We are finally applying the age-old adage of ‘quality over quantity’ where it matters most, in the lives of the world’s poorest.
Continue reading "Getting more bang for our foreign aid buck" »
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MakePovertyHistoryRoadTripper says:
The first half of your comment is idiotic. The second half, intelligent. Foreign DOES work, and rarely (if ever) causes aid dependence. In the past 20 years extreme poverty (those living on less than US$1.25 PPP per day) has dropped from affecting 42% of the world, to 19%. Many Pacific… Read more »
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Richard Fleming says:
@Cynical - Did you know that one of the greatest cause of over-population is poverty. This is a brief article that covers your comment - http://www.globalissues.org/article/206/poverty-and-population-growth-lessons-from-our-own-past Read more »
When rock stars Bob Geldof and U2’s Bono stomped through the United Nations a decade ago, demanding rich nations stump up billions of dollars in extra foreign aid, the world took notice.
Even John Howard signed up to this ``Make Poverty History’’ chant, determined to avoid being seen as a global Mr Scrooge.
But with Australia preparing to double annual foreign aid spending to $8 billion-plus by 2015, the time is right to pause and take account of how we are managing the current program.
Continue reading "The business of foreign aid needs a good audit" »
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Scot says:
Marley. So the 2 Trillion USD spent in Africa over the paste decade has shown great outcomes. I do not see them, and many countries also have seen this waste and have changed the model. Even Asian countries will no longer give money. They agree schemes with proven outcomes will… Read more »
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Pablo says:
Great to find so many greedy, selfish, unsympathetic people trawling the internet and encouraging others to act similarly. Isn’t great to read articles that challenge aid and therefore provide you with more excuses to keep your money for yourself? It is a complex world and to simplistically state that some… Read more »
When you think of Canberra’s more secretive agencies, Australia’s spy agencies – ASIO and ASIS – usually come to mind.
It’s likely that the agency responsible for delivering bikes to poor Aids ravaged Africans, in a country with little or no public transport like Namibia, is not top of the list.
Yet as today’s News Limited investigation shows, AusAID is an agency with a secretive culture that rejects the accountability and transparency it demands of aid recipients such as the Bicycle Empowerment Network.
Continue reading "AusAid could tell you, but then they’d have to…" »
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Michael Linke says:
The link (and the name) for the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia is incorrect, it’s http://www.benbikes.org.za/namibia Read more »
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simon field says:
unfortunately the messages to date really do not add to the discussion. Also the reporters are not very well well informed but trying to make soemthing out off nothing as they have very little experience in understanding the complexity of the issue Read more »
Let me tell you the story of Shane Dolan.
I met him two decades ago, when I was in Ethiopia for Four Corners, filming “The Forgotten Famine”, which I wrote about in this space a month ago.
Shane was an aid worker. Not the kind who hands out food at emergency relief centres, but the kind who works for the long term.
Continue reading "How a black cloud was lifted in an impoverished land" »
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Mr Subramanian says:
Fabulous. I hope articles like this encourage people to increase their giving towards charitable organisations as much as ones about others’ poor experiences with charities discourage them from doing so. Because it’s all really about how effective such aid is, rather than one’s own personal willingness to give, isn’t it? Read more »
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Chuck says:
Mark, what Eric said is true. We rarely comment on your stories, but keep them going. Each one is a great read Read more »
Throughout history millions have urged us to ‘make love, not war’ and an important voice has just joined this choir.
On Tuesday, Australia’s former Army Chief, Peter Leahy, suggested that the defence budget should be cut and redirected towards its diplomacy and aid programs – and no, he wasn’t wearing flares or dreads.
Continue reading "Former army chief says ‘make love, not war’" »
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With detention facilities on Christmas Island getting closer and closer to capacity, and a Federal election looming, the issue of desperate people seeking asylum on Australian shores remains a hotbed of cheap political point-scoring at the expense of some of the world’s neediest people.
Disappointingly, the term “queue jumper” is now so deeply entrenched in our nation’s vernacular that some Australian politicians use it interchangeably with the term “asylum seeker”.
Let me be clear and point out that two are not synonymous. In fact, the queue is a myth.
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Joanna says:
I think you might need to read this part again…of course it has been a few years since you wrote this comment, perhaps you’ve educated yourself since then (though I doubt it…you people want to believe it’s us against them) To be resettled in Australia under the offshore program you… Read more »
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Your name:Noemie says:
I can’t understand while in having been in contact with these individuals and families you can be so influenced by rumors. You talk about the “benefit of the doubt” rule for all asylum seekers coming. i do not think any body who has nothing to fear for his safety in… Read more »
For a politician who prides himself on his relationship with Australian voters, Barnaby Joyce’s comments this week on foreign aid are, frankly, un-Australian.
Senator Joyce used a speech at the National Press Club yesterday to suggest that $50 million in aid that will help people with little or no food in poor countries deal with rising food prices should instead be spent on lowering food prices in Australia.
This year Australia’s foreign aid spending will total just $3.8 billion – or only about 0.35 per cent of our gross national income. That’s 35 cents in every $100. In the context of the Australian Government’s overall budget, we’re talking about a very small amount. Our Government has enough money to fund this, while also spending on essential services here.
Continue reading "Barnaby’s on his own with comments on foreign aid" »
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eye4aneye says:
Not like our health system could use another $3.8 billion anyway Read more »
It was disturbing to read recently that 122 humanitarian workers lost their lives in strife torn countries last year, but even more disturbing to read the reason why.
Aid workers are now often seen in some of the most desperate and violent places in the world to be covert activists, even spies, working against the thugs, dictators and/or clerics who run the hellholes where aid workers try to go about their business.
That makes them targets.
Continue reading "How did aid organisations turn into political activists?" »
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Erin says:
Do we ever analyse why this great Aid PR machine exists? Is it because our concept of giving is so based on if somebody deserves it and is a ‘worthy’ recipient that Aid must be packaged up by PR people for any of us to take notice? Read more »
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Barry says:
I too ceased my World Vision “sponsorship” donations last year after a compulsory increase to the donation amount. I became skeptical of its distribution, especially when I learned my money could have aided 2 communities with another aid organisation who don’t espouse and propagate the myth that you have a… Read more »
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