Sorry about the rather large blog post about to come your way, but finally, the Make Poverty History message within Australia is getting to government. Or, at least, the Opposition of the Government, Recently, Deputy leader of the Labor Party, Julia Gillard, recently wrote an article for Melbourne's The Age on the missed opportunity that the G20 Summit had been. A transcript of the article is below.

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Mr Treasurer, sadly history passed you by

The made-for-television movie, The Girl in a Cafe showed an enigmatic and beautiful young woman gain entry to a G8 summit as a result of a liaison with a shy civil servant.

At the formal dinner, immediately before being hustled out by security, she dramatically makes the point by clicking her fingers that a child dies every three seconds as a result of extreme poverty.

Click, click, click.

At Melbourne's G20 summit, our own enigmatic Tim Costello, and the Make Poverty History group, made the point that 30,000 children die each day from poverty.

His brother Peter responded by disputing the figures and suggesting the figures were inflaming protesters. But at least brother Peter did meet Bono.

So what should history really record about the Melbourne G20 summit?

The truth is the G20 meeting needed a better script. With Peter Costello in the chair, the opportunity for Australia to show leadership on key issues such as overseas aid, climate change and trade was wasted. At the same time the meeting highlighted our path towards increasing debt and higher interest rates.

Helping the world's poorest did not even make it onto the agenda. Tim Costello is right to highlight this indifference and neglect that Australia ranks 19th of the 22 OECD donors. Increasing our development assistance budget should be a priority of the Howard Government. It's a moral question and a national interest question given that our own Asia-Pacific region is lagging when it comes to reducing poverty. Treasurer Costello's claims about increased aid are hollow and incorrect because he cut aid during his first period of office.

Climate change did not make the formal agenda either. Because Treasurer Costello is at worst a global warming sceptic or at best a reluctant convert, he missed the opportunity to make climate change a central part of this event.

Treasurer Costello's comment that "this is not a meeting of environment ministers" is symptomatic of his Government's indifference and neglect of this economic question.

Australia cannot even claim a record of achievement on the hard economic questions the G20 discussed.

While the G20 called for a resumption of world trade negotiations and the success of the Doha development round, Australia's voice was diminished by the AWB scandal and our recent pursuit of bilateral trade agreements at the expense of a broader and more significant multilateral agreement that will benefit not only our own rural exporters but the world's poor.

Australia's pursuit of bilateral agreements distorts our trade situation, and we have actually seen our trade deficit increase with countries with which we conducted free trade agreements.

The failure of the Doha round and the overall failure of the Howard Government's trade policies has seen Australia notch a record 54th consecutive month of trade deficits. Despite the resources boom, we have an annual trade deficit of $14.5 billion, a current account deficit of $54.4 billion and a record foreign debt of $493 billion. While Treasurer Costello was happy to talk about the G20 and its importance in the 21st century what about the long-term implications of these numbers on Australia's future prosperity?

The G20 dialogue on global energy and the minerals markets was a useful initiative but it raises the question of whether it is enough for Australia to rely solely on its resource exports as a path to future prosperity? And the fact that attention is being placed on the supply of these key resources suggests our present boom, already one of the longest on record, is unlikely to see continuing record growth in prices. This was acknowledged by Treasurer Costello.

Although the value of our resource exports has grown strongly over the past five years, this has largely been driven by price, not by volume.

Other export sectors, such as elaborately transformed manufactured exports - the value-adding component of manufacturing, have seen the massive growth from the last Labor government slow to a trickle. Between 1983 and 1996 elaborately transformed manufactures growth averaged 12.9 per cent, but over the past five years it has averaged only 2.7 per cent and recent figures have actually gone negative. Likewise, our services exports have declined and we continue to rack up foreign debt.

The Howard Government's inability to look beyond the short-term political cycle has seen infrastructure bottlenecks and a skills shortage inhibit our export growth and damage our resources industry at a time of record tax revenue.

In other words, the negligence of Treasurer Costello will result in higher inflation and higher interest rates for Australian families.

The American financial press reported the major outcome of the G20 meeting as central banks needing to raise interest rates further to curb inflation despite a predicted slowing of world economic growth.

In the movie The Girl in the Cafe, the girl and the middle-aged public servant manage to make history at the fictional G8 meeting. Unfortunately, at the real Melbourne G20, Treasurer Costello may have made headlines, but he didn't make history. He could have and should have.

(Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/mr-treasurer-sadly-history-passed-you-by/
2006/11/30/1164777718030.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)
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So that was after the G20 Summit, on December 1st.

Today, Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision and Co-Chair of MPH Australia wrote this article, also in Melbourne's The Age.

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We've become a laggard in fighting world poverty

Thousands of people flocked to the Make Poverty History concert last month and hundreds of thousands watched the event in other venues across the country.

Collectively they were raising their voices to demand that Australia does more - its fair share - in striking a death blow to global poverty in our world, a grinding poverty that kills 30,000 children a day.

Today there is now emerging the first sign that their voices are being heard.

Recently, new deputy Labor leader Julia Gillard (Opinion, 1/12) said the Australian Government could and should have done more to put poverty on the agenda at the G20 summit in Melbourne.

Her leader, Kevin Rudd, has spoken about the moral obligations his Christian faith demands of him - that power should be used to protect the poor and the vulnerable at home and abroad. Yet before Rudd's ascension to leader, Labor had yet to commit to concrete efforts to tackle global poverty. The challenge now presents itself to the new Labor leadership team. It is an issue I plan to press with Rudd and Gillard in a meeting.

There is also evidence that the hundreds of thousands of people across the nation that have joined the Make Poverty History campaign are also being heard by the Coalition.

Many Coalition MPs I have spoken to have expressed their desire that Australia do more to tackle global poverty, specially when we have delivered a string of budget surpluses.

As Bono wrapped up his Australian tour he spoke to me about his bewilderment at the two Australias he had encountered. There was the new Australia: proud Australians who told him they want their country to be a leader, not a laggard in facing the great challenges of the age such as global poverty. These were the soccer mums, the kids who went to his concerts, student activists, church and development groups.

Yet he also saw an Australia that was no longer taking a leading role on these issues. Leadership on both sides of the political divide that was following rather than leading on issues such as poverty and climate change.

It is a contrast that is genuinely bewildering. Even more confusing is trying to understand the logic of those arguing against any move by Australia to boost aid and offer debt relief to the world's poorest nations.

It is argued that trade is the panacea for the poor and not aid. Even leaving aside the fact that the Doha round of the world trade talks appears to be terminally stalled, the argument is a false one. Make Poverty History is not arguing against trade but it argues for it to be effective. For the poor it must be accompanied by aid that builds bridges, roads and ports to provide market access.

We've seen in countries such as India and China that even with exceptional economic growth often the poorest do not benefit. In India, despite 11 years of stunning growth, the World Bank estimates that some 47 per cent of children are malnourished and 20 per cent still don't get to go to school.

Back in 1970 Australia and other developed countries first agreed to provide 0.7 per cent of their gross national income as aid. Today 16 of the 22 countries have now committed to reach 0.7 per cent by 2015. Australia's level of aid is 0.3 per cent now and there is still no timetable to take it to 0.5 by 2010 or 0.7 per cent by 2015.

Our contribution to the Global Fund to fight tuberculosis, malaria and AIDS is at $18 million - our fair contribution would be $60 million. Even President George Bush had taken the United States' commitment to the fund from millions to billions.

Other world leaders such as Britain's Tony Blair understand the importance of overseas aid and that you cannot win a war on terror or climate change without winning the war on poverty. As a result, he ensured that the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles had global poverty and the plight of Africa firmly at the top of the agenda.

With the federal election due next year, there is still hope that Australia can become smarter in its policies on poverty.

The Make Poverty History five-point plan calls for leaders to ensure the quality and volume of aid is improved, debt relief is given to those countries struggling to halve their poverty levels by 2015, trade talks are revived, greenhouse pollution is cut and corruption is tackled on our own shores as well as in developing countries.

There is no magic bullet to fighting poverty. It is only through tackling all five areas that we will make inroads.


(Source: http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/weve-become-a-laggard-in-fighting-world-poverty/
2006/12/12/1165685676324.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1)

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There isn't any magic wand to eradicating poverty. But we do have concrete steps. 2007 will prove to be a huge year in the achievement of the MDGs, as July 7th is the half-way point for the MDGs. But we need to keep all our governments accountable, and make them keep their promises.