The envy of the world

Australia may well be at historical heights of economic strength and power. Perhaps the pundits are right to say "we've never had it so good. Whether or not this is true, though, belies the vast inequality that exists between us and some of our nearest international neighbours.

However rich we are financially, it is a sign of our moral and spiritual poverty that we are prepared to tolerate this degree of material inequality. Instead of leveraging our economic position for our own benefit, why aren't we doing more to improve the lives of those around us who desperately need it?

While there are many ways we could do this, I'll leave you with just one. Our government has spoken a great deal about the need to ensure that the profits from our mining industry, for example, are distributed more evenly amongst Australian society, and intend to partially redress this through the mining tax on the table as I write.

To me, this is a good idea that doesn't go far enough. Why should Australian citizens be the exclusive beneficiaries of our mineral resources, particularly when our mining companies have also profited from exploitation of gold and copper in Papua New Guinea?

Instead of distributing the profits from this tax to me and other Australians who don't really need it, why don't we use it to benefit people for whom it could actually be a matter of life or death? A major fund of this type could provide a substantial contribution to our ability to engage in humanitarian, disaster response and poverty alleviation programs internationally, and would certainly have a huge potential impact in PNG. It would also go some way towards redressing the massive and systematic inequalities that exist between nations today, and on which much of our financial success has been built.

So, economists think we've never had it so good? Well, hundreds of millions of people living in poverty agree. Australia's financial situation is the envy of the world, and it's time to do something more useful with our riches than buy another plasma TV.