Ending poverty is within our grasp

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.