popnperish,
Are you aware of what Iran did in relation to lowering birth rates?

Their birth rate went from 6.5 per woman to about 1.7 per woman.

All by education on family planning and the provission of the means.

This illustrates it can be achieved without draconian means.

Just Google Iran family planning

Banjo
I said I had a good job, not a high executive salary. And why on earth should money spent incarcerating refugees by classed as “aid”?

Yabby
The IMF is not funded by aid money. Nor was Rudd’s salary. Both are paid for by our taxes, though, and I accept that the international bureaucracy can become a gravy train and that some of the money could be better spent.

I also agree that fraud is a problem and that not all aid spending is effective. These are reasons to improve governance on aid programs and research the most effective ways of providing aid, not to completely abandon attempts to help people in developing countries.

Chris
You’re right, migrants often send significant remittances to their countries of origin. That means that migrants to Australia are generous, not necessarily that Australians are generous.

I’ve had a quick look at the data on private charitable giving. Sources are mixed, but it seems that Australians do relatively well in terms of the percentage of people who give money to charity, but Americans give by far the most to charity as a percentage of income (though their official aid is even lower than ours)

Rhian,
You said,"And why on earth should money spent incarcerating refugees by classed as “aid”?

Because that is exactly what it is. We rescue them, house them, feed them, give medical treatment, transport them and settle them in Aus, with generous social security benefits.

They are foreigners, so it is foreign aid

That is only for the illegals

For the other genuine refugees that we fly here, the full costs are, of course, foreign aid. Applies untill they gain citizenship.

*not to completely abandon attempts to help people in developing countries *

Rhian, I was not aware that this was being suggested. Just that
the 4 billion plus which we already spend, is hardly spent wisely
and there is heaps of potential to see that less of it is wasted
and land up corrupted. Throw more billions at it and the first thing
that you will achieve is an ever bigger gravy train.

Now what about some family planning money for the third world.

We are increasing funding to third world countries by introduction of the carbon tax. This will make their practices more profitable as we will not be able to compete on cost. Your job may be their gift to them with an INCREASED environmental cost.
The poor however are unlikely to benefit much in the third world, as it will be wealthy investors/owners who will reap lions share.

In modern society even the third world has a better standard of living than the average person living in developed nations two centuries ago. While we may look upon them in (relative) pity, they usually have greater opportunities than their forefathers did. They are still developing and prospering within their own paradigm (is that the right word?).

Politicians realise this and don't really care how much they develop as long as they are not going backwards, which unless threatened by war or famine (or political corruption) will not happen. In the case of political corruption this will be tolerated to a certain extent as it is in developed nations (as long as it is not widely visable in the general population).

After all, it is not in a countries best interest to give so much foreign aid to another nation which may inable them to outperform them as a competitor in the future.

If famine is a continual problem there is no amount of aid which will overcome the people's wish to live beyond their means. In this case they will ALWAYS be in need of aid.

War requires aid but only as long as the conflict is ongoing, which may explain why many wars continue unnecessarily (Iraq).

Foreign aid is another political tool to explain why they are taxing you so much and you are always struggling, but in truth it is YOUR government who is corrupt.