Rhian, all i am saying is that govts will find it harder to give away money to foreig aid as they see their own situation suffer whether it be much higher ultilities bills, housing costs, longer hospital waiting lists and so on.

Obvioulsy Labor recongises this too. We are tend tobe more generous when things are going well, although some are more so than others.

Got a good job Rhian? Nice safe government guaranteed income like Jo perhaps. Such things make it pretty easy to be generous with someones taxes.

Try asking someone who can't pay their mortgage & has, or is about to loose their home, or car about sending our hard earned to some corrupt country, or NGO to spend.

I have no difficulty with you folks giving generously of your own money, but leave the rest of us out of it.

God I'm sick of people who want to do good, but only with someone else's money.

What we should be doing is resigning from the UN, & using all the money we give them to waste, at home.

Chris

Free markets don’t squeeze budgets. Total government consumption spending in Australia has been very stable at 17-19% of GDP since the mid 1970s, while social assistance payments have fluctuated between 7.5% and 8.5% of GDP. Capital investment has been squeezed, but that’s another story.

Of course, all governments always face budget pressures because people like receiving benefits and services but don’t like paying taxes. The issue is one of priorities.

Hasbeen
yes, thanks, I do have a good job, which means it's my taxes taken from my hard-earned money that I want the government to spend on aid. I also want government to spend on services and benefits for people in this country who need them. They take enough for both.

i should not have mentioned free/r markets (tricky for me), but i stand by rest of what i said. We tend to be more generous when things are going well, although never too much in the case of foreign aid, and the perception (or reality) is that all is not well in Australia.

We are still a generous country by world standards. Foreign aid is only one aspect.

Yet another consequence of the government's high population growth policies.

Well that's good Rhian, pity they have to take it out of defence to be able to waste it.

While they want to send our defence forces off to dangerous places, without the very best of equipment to give them a reasonable chance of surviving, there sure isn't enough to waste on the UN, foreign aid, or boat people.