Personal and Government Responsibility in Global Poverty
Aug 2nd 2007Tim Jeffries::Rants & ::Politics & Poverty
Tim Costello has had an article printed in the age, urging government to do more on global poverty. From the article:
Australians do care about overseas aid. Individually we are among the most generous givers to overseas aid in the world, second only to the Irish…..The Make Poverty History movement in Australia is a growing voice for change. It has 50,000 registered supporters and some 800,000 white bands — the global symbol of the fight against poverty — have been distributed in Australia. Last year, its website received almost 700,000 visits.
I believe political parties can no longer ignore the movement for change — the movement to Make Poverty History.
(The Age – “We are winning the war on global poverty but government can do more”)
So the question this raises for me is this: to what extent is the government responsible for donating to foreign aid, and how much should that be an individual personal decision? I guess the term that comes to mind as something that commonly comes up is “National Interest”: it’s the description that politicians use to explain what they believe should be the way they govern: the make decisions based on what is in the national interest. But under that framework, it would be fairly rare that a government should increase foreign aid. So is the notion of only making decisions that are in Australia’s “national interest” a bad idea? Or, has the Make Poverty History campaign come at this thing from the wrong angle by focusing on increasing government contributions to aid? I’d love to hear your thoughts.