Making poverty history

I attended another forum on Friday. The purpose was to give people an idea of where the various political parties stand on overseas aid. The Make Poverty History campaign has been placing pressure on the Government to spend at least 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid by 2015. Experts tend to agree that if all rich nations allocated that proportion of their respective budgets to aid, then we could achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

The Democrats believe that a rich country like ours, with a booming economy and successive budgetary surpluses, should easily be able to afford 0.7 per cent. In fact, there's no reason why we shouldn't exceed that figure. Several other countries allocate more than 1 per cent. Australia is currently only the 15th most generous aid donor in the world based on per capita gross national income. And yet, as individuals, we're the second most generous aid donors in the world. We're prepared to give our money to good causes, but the Government isn't.

Tim Costello, the head of World Vision, opened the panel. He was inspiring as always. Greg Hunt, the federal member for Flinders, also spoke. He said that the Government is committed to poverty alleviation, and meeting the Millennium Development Goals, but that it wouldn't put a timeframe on reaching the 0.7 per cent target. He argued, correctly, that cluster munitions are a development problem - they clog up hospitals with amputees, destroy entire villages in one hit, and prevent agriculture for decades. But he lied in saying that Australia is leading the movement for their abolition. Australia is in fact in the process of acquring cluster munitions for the first time, and we're thwarting international moves for a blanket ban.

The focus of my talk was on what I consider to be one of the greatest impediments to achieving the Millennium Development Goals - war, or militarism. I considered it appropriate to focus on this given that it was the International Day of Peace. The audience didn't need a reiteration of the problem of poverty. They know how many people live on less than a dollar a day and how many people die each year of preventable diseases. But very rarely does anyone argue the war factor.

We spend US$1.4 trillion a year on militarism. That's US$184 per person per year. More than one-third of this is United States expenditure in Afghanistan and Iraq. If the United States abandoned its nuclear weapons program, we'd have an extra US$40 billion a year to spend on development - that's almost enough on its own for us to meet the Millennium Development Goals by the target dates. Australia also spends a ridiculous amount on militarism - about A$20 billion. This year, for the first time ever, we spent more on defence than on education federally. These are disturbing facts.

I've put together my first YouTube video. I hope you like it - please post comments. It's about the poor record of the Howard Government on social justice issues and how far we lag behind the times.