Foreign Aid in the Budget

Last night's budget allocation of $3.2 billion for overseas aid - or 0.3% of Gross National Income (GNI) - keeps them on track to being at the tail end of OECD countries. Nothing inspiring about this insipid performance.

They are proud to inch towards the goal of $4 billion by 2010 – that will be .34% of GNI.

While welcoming the undertaking, non-government aid bodies noted that a majority of other donor nations had agreed to move to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2010. And Scandinavian countries already give .7% or more of GNI in overseas aid.

Here's the longer view of Australia's official aid, from Ben's blog.

In this bonanza budget, where the government had the problem of too much money and nowhere to put it (see Ross Gittins comments), there was plenty of scope to live up to the nine values that the government requires to be taught in schools, starting with 'Care and Compassion' and 'Integrity'. Instead, they have fallen short on both.

In 2000 the PM signed on to the Millennium Declaration in 2000, agreeing that,

We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected.

I guess that the PM and I differ on the meaning of 'spare no effort'. As our government is doing so little, it is up to us to do it ourselves.



Click here to subscribe to this blog.