High time to up the ante in fight against poverty

Yet over recent years there has been increasing pressure to curb our foreign aid spending in order to help find budget savings.

This time last year the Government announced it would delay its planned aid budget increase its target of having aid reach 0.5 per cent of gross national income in order to achieve a minuscule surplus. On the eve of last Christmas 7 per cent of committed aid was diverted to cover asylum seeker expenditure.

Any further cuts to our aid budget would be deeply contradictory considering Prime Minister Julia Gillard currently co-chairs the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals Advocacy Group.

It would also send a signal of stinginess from one of the wealthiest countries in the world that we appear to view providing life-saving aid to those overseas as a discretionary luxury that we now can't afford.

It's clear that much has been achieved since 2000, but with just 1000 days left to the MDG deadline, there is still much work to be done. By the end of 2015 more than a billion people will still be living on an income of less than $1.25 per day and almost 19,000 lives under five are still lost daily, mostly from poverty-related illness that could be easily prevented.

With just 38 days until the Gillard Government releases its 2013-14 Federal Budget we must leave our foreign aid budget alone and let it grow so we can help achieve the MDGs by 2015 and continue to save lives in our backyard and beyond.