Australian Aid

QUESTIONS
A) Read this article: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/were-not-really-helping-20110718-1hlhr.html
B) Summarize the article in dot points on your blog and then write a paragraph stating your view on what the author is presenting.
C) Why do you think Australia is giving more Aid? What would be the benefits of such a policy? What would be the negatives?
D) Discuss Article as Class

1.

• The Australian government will give $8 million of foreign aid by 2015 and the amount has been increasing since recent history.
• The government believes that helping people in need is a good thing and there are always people who will need help.
• Some aid does help such as in emergency situations such as the 2004 tsunami where foreign aid helped save many lives but it accounts to only 7 percent of todays program.
• Poverty arounf the world is falling dramatically and will be only 15% by 2015 compared to 54% in 1981. This is due to large economic growth of the developing countries not foreign aid.
• Australia has provided PNG with aid for the last 40 years and is one of the worlds largest but PNG is no closer to sustainable economic growth or living standards than it was in 1975.
• A lot of people are confused about how aid really does serve Australia's interests. One example is building schools in Indonesia to combat terrorism by countering Islamic radicalism in schools.
• The whole rich western countries won't admit that the world is changing as wealth and power goes to developing countries.

I feel that the author has a very strong view on how foreign aid doesn't help others around the world. He must of done a lot of research in order to make a good judgement on how aid really works. I feel that the author should relook at this article and see that at least some of this aid is making someone elses life somewhere in the world much better.

2.

I think that Australia is giving more aid as other countries around the world will see Australia as a role model and as a country which appreciates others not only the people in its own country. It also allows other countries to get to the same economic stability as us and can in total make the world economy much better. This would give numerous benefits as it will improve other peoples lives which are less foirtunate than us and can help the world have the same equality. This would also have many negatives as this large amounts of money being taken overseas takes away the oppurtunity for that money to be put to good use here such as infrastructure, transport, helping families, etc. As well as this Australia still has a number of homeless people which need to be helped and this money can help them dramatically.