Australian Aid

• In the past five years, Australia's foreign aid budget has doubled.
• Last year, Kevin Rudd announced a review of Australia's overseas aid program by a number of experts.
• Some aid programs like the Indonesian floods are obvious examples of aid but this particular situation only accounts for 7% of the budget.
• The vast bulk of aid is aimed at overcoming long-term poverty.
• Poverty is decreasing. In 1981, 54 per cent of the world's people lived in extreme poverty. By 2005 only 29% of people lived in extreme poverty.
• Aid is not actually helping these people, it is their economic growth as these 'developing countries' begin to catch up to the 'developed world'.
• An example of Australia's attempts at Aid are the Torres Strait where, for nearly 40 years, Australia has been sending aid there but it is no better off.
• Aid programs build schools and other important facilities but the developing countries already know that they have to construct these facilities.

• Australians like to see Indonesia as a poor nation that needs help but Indonesia's GDP is a lot higher than Australia's.

I think the author is trying to present the idea that countries like Australia have been sending aid to these developing countries for so long that they can't see that they don't really need our help. The author has shown that projects that have gone for decades have done very little and that when the developing countries are allowed to develop they begin to do very well for themselves.

Australia is giving more aid because they want to impress certain countries. The aid project in Africa and the Caribbean is all for Australia's UN Security Council bid and the big program in Afghanistan is aimed at impressing Washington. Impressing and securing these things that are of interest and importance to the government is a benefit to giving aid but the negatives are that this is a lot of money that the Australian government could be spending on internal affairs and is money that they won't be getting back because the developing countries wouldn't be able to pay it back.