Solving poverty

The reality is exactly the reverse of Senator Mason’s claim. Poor country exporters still face significantly higher tariffs from rich countries than those applying in the reverse direction. The World Trade Organisation (WTO) while maintaining a façade of representational democracy is, according to Oxfam, governed by a dictatorship of wealth.

Senator Mason points to China as the great example of freer trade reducing poverty. However, another Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz points out that the Chinese success has come precisely because China did not liberalise their economy according to the standard “Washington Consensus” formula. Furthermore, it must be acknowledged that the Chinese success story is limited to the eastern cities and extreme poverty still exists in many regions. It is possible to have strong growth and still leave many people behind.

Second, Senator Mason fails to understand the nature of aid. According to the senator, aid is simply welfare; money paid to lazy individuals to do nothing. As such, it is destructive. Such payments may well be destructive but they not represent what foreign aid is all about.

Aid is about empowering people to participate in their communities, to take control of their lives and to benefit from the economic growth that fairer trade policies may create.

In fact, a key component of many community-based aid projects is micro-credit. Rather than being a free market alternative to aid, micro-credit, such as that practiced by Grameen Bank, steps in where commercial banks and other financial institutions fear to tread.

It gives groups of women, in particular, the opportunity to work their way out poverty. Senator Mason states that this “mixture of capitalism and social responsibility has done far more to deliver people from poverty than all the aid in the world ever has” without realising that this very mixture is, in fact, aid at work.

On one point Senator Mason is right. He stated, “the way to tackle poverty … is by giving people opportunity, not welfare”. However, that opportunity does not automatically come as GDP rises. The economic theory of the “trickle down effect” or “rising boats” has been discredited (to the extent it ever had any real credence). For those who are marginalised, those who don’t have clean water to drink, those without sanitation, those suffering from AIDS, malaria etc, those without education, those outside our modern society, giving opportunity means using aid to tackle those barriers.

The Micah Challenge is all about giving that opportunity. It is about basic justice - ensuring that all people can live dignified lives and participate in their communities.

This will not happen automatically as the rich get richer. It needs deliberate action by governments and individuals, to ensure these opportunities are available; deliberate action to provide education, to give access to clean water and to tackle diseases.

It is such a shame that Senator Mason chose to attack our campaign on ideological grounds rather than do as the 8th Millennium Development Goal asks, “develop a global partnership for development”.

If we work together, if we use all the tools at our disposal (trade justice, aid, debt cancellation and others), if we accept the need for justice in our world then poverty can indeed be halved by 2015. Rather than argue, let’s Make Poverty History.