Ending poverty is within our grasp

Everyday around the world, as many as 30,000 children die simply because they were born into a life of poverty.

This means that every hour more than 1,200 children die because they don’t have access to water or food or basic health care. That’s more than 10 million children that die every year purely by the “lottery of latitude” - the location into which they were born.

Nine-year-old Korsid is one such child. I met Korsid in India last year. Here was a child who worked 60 hours a week in the gem-cutting industry - an Indian export industry. And his reward? He earns just $US1 a week for his efforts. To see a little 9-year-old boy working in these conditions was heartbreaking. Unfortunately, there is no labour legislation covering the processing of these gemstones in India and as a result, the poor and their children are often exploited.

Unfortunately Korsid’s story is not unique; he is one of more than 12 million child labourers in India alone. And the tragedy is that Korsid’s fate represents just one of the many faces of poverty in our world today.

This tragedy is not lost on Australians. More and more Australians are asking themselves why we live in a world where more than one billion people still live on less than $US1 a day, why more than 800 million people go hungry every day and why more than 100 million primary school-age children can’t go to school.

As people become more connected with their global neighbours through globalisation and technology, more and more Australians are seeing the injustices of poverty and are taking a stand. Last year we saw a groundswell of people wanting to make a change, to help end poverty - we saw it through the huge momentum of the Make Poverty History campaign where more than 50,000 Australians joined the campaign to fight poverty and in the more than 800,000 MPH white armbands bought by Australians to symbolise this fight.

It was also evidenced in a recent Roy Morgan survey, which found that eradicating extreme poverty, and hunger in the world was the number one priority for people aged 14 to 34 years.

Australians, particularly young Australians, understand that the world has arrived at a place where we are so rich that if we made a serious effort to address poverty, we could not only tremendously improve the state of the world, but for the first time in history, we could end extreme poverty within a generation.

To most of us the issue of eradicating poverty seems an insurmountable problem. There is no doubt that global poverty and climate change are the biggest moral challenges facing our world today. Both will require a global commitment if we are to succeed.

But we don’t need any new promises from governments, or months of navel gazing, theorising and soul searching to find the best way forward.

The Millennium Development Goals, established by the United Nations Millennium Declaration, already provide us with the framework to eradicate poverty. Australia, along with all members of the UN signed up to the goals in 2000. If we reach the eight goals we will halve world poverty by 2015, but while we are almost half way through the timeframe, there is still a long way to go to reach our aim.

More than 30 years ago, world leaders agreed that if the world’s richest nations gave 1 per cent of gross national income, we could end extreme poverty.

It was believed that 0.3 per cent should come from private businesses and individuals and the remaining 0.7 per cent would come from governments.

Privately Australians have shown their compassion to the world by giving generously to help those communities in the greatest need. A report released earlier this year in the UK by the Charities Aid Foundation found that Australians privately were the fourth most generous nation.

But despite this obvious compassion emanating from Australians, the level of support our government gives to overseas aid compares poorly.

The $2.9 billion the Australian government gave to aid this past financial year is less than they would have given had they maintained the same levels of spending as when they came to power.

In 2006/07, Australia has aid budgeted at 0.3 per cent of GNI. This is an important step forward; however, it still falls well short of the internationally agreed target of 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2010.

The government has committed $2946 million towards international aid in the 2006-07 Budget, compare that with the $22,251 million budgeted for the defence department.

Imagine what would happen if we invested even part of the defence budget in aid and development instead - if we invested more into water and sanitation initiatives or into bringing anti-malarial bed nets to malaria regions and anti-retroviral medicines to the millions of HIV-positive people who will otherwise die.

Last year the US government spent around A$750 billion on defence, this is around seven times the total aid expenditure by all countries.

If just a small proportion of this money was spent on development programs it would make a huge difference. Around A$23 billion in aid is needed for water and sanitation, A$17 billion would enable us to meet the global challenge of HIV and AIDS and A$13 billion would provide basic education to all children of primary school age around the world.

These are very practical actions.

Eminent economist Jeffrey Sachs has argued that if the world’s richest nations increased aid to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2010 it would halve the one billion people living on less than $US1 a day.

This is, without question, the greatest bargain in the world.

If we do nothing, if world governments, including our own, fall short of their commitment and we fail to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we can expect major global implications.

If we fail to take action on HIV and AIDS businesses and governments, both of which are reliant on economic growth, in developing countries face potentially crippling conditions. Some African nations are predicting that AIDS will wipe out up to 60 per cent of their working populations - this could destroy local markets and deplete local workforces.

If the Australian government is to make a difference, and meet its promises to the world’s poor, it must take a number of steps to better help people in the developing world. None of these are large, but they are all important.

The first step is for the Australian government to commit to more and better aid, and a timeline to lift Official Development Assistance to 0.5 per cent of Gross National Income by 2010 and 0.7 per cent by 2015.

Australia should also: consider debt relief for those countries that need it to meet their own targets set out under the MDGs; ensure that multilateral trade agreements meet the human development needs of poor countries; and expand support for good governance efforts in poor countries.

We also need to take urgent action to cut Australian greenhouse pollution and participate fully in international conventions to combat climate change. There needs to be greater priority in overseas aid to renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and an increase in support to help the poorest communities prepare for the impacts of climate change.

We have an unprecedented opportunity to end world poverty. Failing to act would be one of the greatest moral failures of our nation.