How loudly did you protest at Australia's termination of the live export cattle trade to Indonesia, Justin?

There was a rich country suddenly shutting off a vital supply of protein to a poor neighboring country, based on the fact that the poor country didn't come up to our middle class values.

Forget about redistributing our wealth. Get our values straight first

Speaking of Christian ethics, I don't recall anything about Jesus saying "Get a group of armed men, go around to people and threaten to bash their heads in or lock them in a cage if they won't give you as much money as you demand, and then spend it on worthy causes."

Yet what distinguishes the state from all other social groups is that the state is that group claiming a legal monopoly of the use of unprovoked violence or the threat of violence, which is the basis of all taxation and jurisdiction, and from there all policy.

The author has established good reason for *voluntary* help for those in need. But he has made no case whatsoever for any policy response, either on ethical or practical grounds.

Dr Justin you write
'Instead of distributing the profits from this tax to me and other Australians who don't really need it, why don't we use it to benefit people for whom it could actually be a matter of life or death? '

I could not agree more. Instead it will be used to pee up against a wall or to buy another packet of smokes and we will wonder why the Health budget needs increasing. The carbon tax will go to rich corrupt third world leaders while little if any will get to the poor. Thank God for the many Christian organisations making a small difference.

Justin, we pour money into these countries all the time, ostensibly to help them improve their standards of living, health etc., but it seems to me that very little of it ends up out of the hands of the bureaucracy, so why do we bother.

Our own poor are largely responsible for their own destiny. There isn't much we can do to stop them living an unhealthy lifestyle and squandering the resources of the whole community. T'was ever thus.

David

We don't need material eqaulity, for that would be unfair. It would
penalise those who work hard and save, giving to those too lazy to
paddle their own canoe.

What we need is equality of opportunity, and that we have, for those
who bother to try.

Why not work for lunch, rather then demand a free one. It really
doesen't kill people to get off their butts occasionally.

The title, "Applied Christian Ethics" is bemusing. Could the author please follow up with a brief paper explaining the difference between ordinary ethics and Christian ethics,of both the applied and non-applied kind?

Two articles in a row.

Why is it that those who live of charity, public or religious, always want to give away money they have never done a damn thing to earn themselves.

Guilt I suppose.

I support strongly this article. David is asking us to consider the wealth of our country and to admit that even though many of us are doing quite nicely many many people in our wealthy environment are struggling. What is to be our response? Some respondents seem to think that this topic is not a worthy one. It is true that much of our taxes is redirected to already privileged pockets. We need to name this and actively rectify it. Not all people down on their luck have brought it on themselves. Our taxes are all messed up. We penalise people who work hard with more and more tax and then give tax breaks to people who invest (speculate) in land and who contribute nothing to the wealth of the country thus making it difficult to buy our homes, fund our schools and hospitals. We need to cease being duped by the 1% and demand a tax system suited to working people. It is much easier getting things done when we are not inhibited by a repressive tax system.

This is better argued than many articles of its type, though its conclusions are challenging. I find myself at least in part agreeing with the perspective of Peter and Hasbeen, though – if we have a moral responsibility to use our wealth and good fortune to help those less fortunate, then it is surely more a personal, individual responsibility than a collective, government one. Coerced “generosity” is no virtue.

There tends to be a sacrificial element to the virtue of religious redistributionists – what matters is not that others are better off, but that we are worse off.

I also wonder at the efficacy of some aid programs and charities. They do a good and necessary job of addressing the symptoms and suffering caused by poverty and social breakdown, but often don’t have a great track record of addressing the causes. The countries that have been most successful at reducing poverty are those that have adopted policies delivering strong and sustained economic growth, such as China. It is not charity that will help us achieve the millennium goal of reducing world poverty, but economic growth.

You are only doing better in Australia if you of the mining or big end of the finance industry. For everbody else, there is little to celebrate as our farming lands are closed for poisonous csg mining, our retail is staggering, the Governments lust of more taxation has driven the costs of living beyond our wages. Then if you're very ill or disabled, you are treated like as a leper.

In Queensland, children must wait years just to see a specialist, and many others who are seriously ill are being turned away from hospital, sent home to die.

You make some good points Justin.

Plasma TVs ? What about HSV Commodores !? Miners buy them by the thousands ! And when something happens to hold their money up or a mine runs out or people say they don't want exploration or mining on their sometimes, prime agricultural land, they start screaming poor ! And you wonder what happened to the thousands of dollars a week they have been earning ! And for years ! I spoke to a PNG woman by phone a couple of years back, and when I explained that people here get a average minimum $500 a fortnight on the Dole, those that don't work, she was Astounded !! and Amazed !! and blurted out, What !? Nobody will want to work ! And how right she was, is !! She told me that she has to work hard all day for six days a week panning for gold just to feed her family !

Arthur Bell ( aka bully )

If the author wants to help people in PNG, perhaps he can preach
to his Catholic brothers, to start behaving ethicaly, when it
comes to family planning in PNG.

My sources tell me that those women don't want those large families,
there is an unmet need for family planning, but the Catholic Church
has done what it can to prevent that, including telling women about
the evils of tubal litigation.

Given that the Catholic Church is one of the largest landholders in
Australia, perhaps they could lead by example and flog off some
of their properties to send the money to PNG. Taxpayers already
send heaps as it is.

Now that would be ethical.

The threat (whether carried out or not) to refuse basic medical treatment to PNG residents who seek such aid in the northern border region is barely short of criminal. We should be ashamed on behalf of our stupid government.

It seems extremely reasonable, and would be relatively inexpensive, and in our own best interest, to provide targetted aid in PNG in an endeavour to eliminate TB. If about 7 in every 100,000 Australians get TB each year, as the author has stated, that would be around 1600 individuals. This, and the rise of multi-resistant strains of this infectious disease should be a warning to us all. Our lack of action in this regard at least would be an indictment on us all.

We can't fix all the problems of the world, and it is a bit naive for the author to suggest it, and Australia's wealth does rightly belong to all Australians, from mining or otherwise, but we are not so petty and so selfish as to refuse our governments the right to provide some worthwhile targetted assistance to our nearest neighbour. We have been doing so for years, and yes, some or a lot has been misused, but surely we can improve the method of delivery. (It doesn't help of course when we get some flack from Sir Michael Somare, former PM of PNG. In fact it hurt.) Still, some minor setbacks should not be sufficient to prevent us from trying to do what's right.

PNG was formerly an Australian Protectorate, but we didn't really do ourselves too proud in carrying out the associated responsibilities, and have only done worse leading up to, and since, giving PNG Independence in '75. Their problems are certainly not directly of our making, but I feel it is clear that we still bear some responsibility to this our nearest neighbour. (And we haven't done too badly exploiting some of its resources either.)

The observations of Peter Baume and Justin Denholm together with those of Mark O’Connor (OLP 21/11/11) on Malthusianism make sad yet bearable reading compared with the defensive reactions of the prejudiced readers who filed their comments.

Anyone who claims to have any form of care for himself should be able to understand that his/her welfare and health depend ultimately on the welfare and health of the community in which he/she is bound to live.

In the little Italian island in which I was born, by the end of WWII, tuberculosis spread to over fifty two per cent of the population.

Being still in my teens I escaped recruitment into the navy and probable early death just for being physically too weak.

It was then that I observed that walls were no impediments to infectious diseases and, sometimes later noted how equally pervasive were some mental conditions.

What I observed in my later days is that social institutions constrict freedom and inevitably create conditions for the birth of privilege.

Undeniably the privilege of self styled Leaders has been the cause of all ills in man.

Finally, it is to be observed that man’s great enemy is waste and unless each one of us observes the strictest of economies we are bound to choke together sooner than we think.

Saltpeter we actually did a pretty damn good job in PNG. Granted it was not quite as good as the poms did in the Solomons, but still very good.

We would have done a better job still if that idiot Whitlam had not decided to grandstand to the world, & give them independence about 20 years before they were ready for it.

I was there for independence. I watched the aid money used to buy out Ozzie plantation owners. I watched those plantations, given to the villagers go back to bush. That destroyed much of their export earnings.

I was at Bougainville when they allowed the unions & the locals, [Bougainvilleans as distinct from PNG] to destroy the mine, leading to it's permanent closure, & loss of even more export earnings, & almost part of the country.

If you don't cut your kids loose some time, & make them responsible for their mistakes, they'll never grow up, the same goes for PNG.

Yes we do owe them a bit more help, because we cut them loose too soon, but it must be limited for their own long term good.

We have enough bludgers here, without encouraging a whole country of then to our north.

Hasbeen,

I was there too, in Port Moresby '74 - '76. In my short stay I too observed they weren't ready for Independence. I did enjoy the celebrations though, the gathering in Moresby of so many different clans, very colourful and dynamic. But the writing was already on the wall.

We would have moved in different circles, and my experience more limited. What I noted most was the disconnect between the expats and the locals, the prejudice on both sides, and the lack of appropriate preparation for handover. Moresby was a melting pot, people coming from villages in hopes of getting work 'in town', when there wasn't any, so they had to bludge on wantoks. Things quickly got rough, gangs of rascals roamed, stealing, bashing (including their own), and rapes started against expats and locals. Lots of drinking warm SP. Pretty sad really, and I was glad to get out.

Perhaps the precipitous nature of the handover was partly to blame, but how long had Oz been there? There was still only limited general education and only a poor attempt get the locals really 'engaged', with the locals mostly only doing the donkey work. Hence I formed the opinion that Oz (including the expats) did not do such a great job. And who would have benefitted most from the gold, the timber, the plantations and the copper?

As PNG is not just a complex culture, but an aggregation of complex cultures, it was always going to take a lot of special understanding to apply the right sort of aid in the right way and under the right conditions. I perceive that we missed the mark quite a lot.

I believe we are obliged to continue targetted, and conditional aid, not as paternalists, but as concerned neighbours with quite a shared history. Fighting TB and AIDS would have to be high on the list of priorities.

Salpetre, sometimes its not how much is spent, but how its spent,
which is the crucial question.

Last time I checked, Australia spent around 4 billion a year on
development aid, with PNG being the largest beneficiary, at over
1 million $ a day.

But of course the development aid budget is a honeypot for highly
paid consultants and advisors, who know how to milk the system for
all that it is worth.

A closer inspection as to how money is spent in PNG, should soon
show where enough money could be made available for TB, even if at
a cost to overpaid consultants.

"Envey of the World" This is an article devoid of any real analysis.