Political promises and memes

You may recall that I have blogged here, here, and here about Australia’s failure to live up to its promises to raise Foreign Aid to 0.7% of GDP. So, you will know that I am pleased to see that Kevin Rudd has announced a timetable for a Labor government to meet this target. He specified 0.5% by 2015-16. It is still a bit vague, but at least he is talking about it!

Kevin Rudd in Darfur, 2006

In an interview on the ABC’s World Today program , Rudd said:

It is in our own interests to tackle poverty in our own region, as part of a wider strategy to deal with the impact of terrorism, climate change pandemics and refugees potentially on Australia.

I have the impression that Rudd is an excellent manager who has a good grasp on the detail of bringing about better practice. He has this to say about helping countries in our region to achieve universal primary education.

For example, in education we would negotiate a timeline to meet a target of universal… truly universal primary education. This in turn will go to the need for comprehensive audits of the state of the region's primary school infrastructure, including the adequacy of teacher training and the adequacy of curricular.

I'm looking forward to fresh approaches to effective government.

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Megan at Imaginif has tagged me in a meme ‘Bloggers for Positive Global Change’. What is a meme? Basically, it is a chain of recommendations – I am tapped on the shoulder by someone, and I then tap others. So, here are some blogs about positive global change that I read.

Ben's Blog – Australian blog mostly about aid and policy.

Realclimate – This is the best resource on the Web for keeping up to date with the views of reputable climate scientists. They have a great summary where they debunk 25 myths about Climate Change.

Next Billion – This blog is about sustainable business models for the world’s poorest people – the next billion people.

Center for Global Development: Views from the Center – This is a group blog that features notes from Nancy Birdsall, her colleagues at the Center for Global Development and others in the development community about new ways to reduce global poverty.



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