Hi Individual - my point is not really about this thread in particular, but the fact that you and many others do not have the courage of your convictions to give us the benefit of your "witty" comments under your real name.

Oh Gawd, not another finger wagging moral puritan piously telling Australians how disgusting we are. Mr Preston calls himself "an ethicist". Who is paying his wages and how much does he earn?

One presumes that Preston gets his bucks from the good old Aussie taxpayer, the very person who's welfare he is least concerned with. One newspaper report in Sydney's "Daily Telegraph" claimed that some of these public servants responsible for handing out Aussie taxpayer cash to every foreigner they can find are earning $300,000 dollars a year with special tax provisions for working overseas.

I am always very suspicious of people who always claim to be acting for the most altruistic reasons. Scratch the surface and you usually find the most blatant self interest.

If Mr Preston is one of those characters on $300 grand a year, of course he can find a million "altruistic" reasons why Aussie taxpayers should keep on giving.

Memo to Mr Preston. An Australian was found dead in the carpark of Liverpool hospital after seeking help their and being turned away because of overcrowding. 840 Aussies have died on the Sydney-Brisbane Pacific Highway in the last 20 years because the NSW government has been unable to find a miserable few billions of dollars to complete this national highway to dual carriage standards. Hospitals in Sydney are routinely at "condition red". Homeless people abound on the streets of our CBD.

If you really are an "ethicist" then you had better get it through your head that charity begins at home. It is unethical of you to demand that Australia give away $ 4.5 billion that we just don't have when we are $200 billion in dept., and we have our own deserving poor who are being shafted by people like you.

Noel, the reason why we need rules of just conduct in the first place is to establish the principle that’s it’s not okay for the stronger to abuse or simply grab from the weaker.

Here’s a couple of basic ethical precepts that you obviously missed in Ethics 101:
1. Other people are not your property. Don’t treat them as such.
2. There is no more basic moral and humanitarian distinction that that between voluntary and charitable transactions, and transactions based on attacking or threatening to attack people.

Imagine if someone had written an article in praise of making love, but on examining it, it turned out that they had failed to distinguish between making love and rape, totally confusing sex based on aggressively threatening people with making love. Well that’s the level of moral and intellectual blunder you have made in your article.

Did Jesus say “Go around with some armed men and threaten to attack people, or lock them in a cage if they don’t give you as much money as you demand, and then with that money, do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”?

No, he didn’t say that, did he? And to confuse his charitable message with anything based on initiating aggression against anyone shows complete moral idiocy, doesn’t it?

In fact and in law, taxation is a compulsory impost. Marilyn in an earlier post referred to the “torture” of refugees, meaning, detention. So even Marilyn understands that it is moral nonsense to ostentatiously pretend “compassion” funding gifts to people based on taxation.

Also, have you actually checked AusAid to see what so-called foreign aid money is spent on? People should no more be forced to fund political, than religious indoctrination of children.

There is simply no reason for asserting that gifts to non-Australians, taken under compulsion and given to foreign government bureaucracies and academics, are morally or pragmatically better than gifts given by people who voluntarily donate them, directly to the objects of their compassion in other countries.

Noel’s is an ostentatious display of completely fake moral superiority.

Colin Pain,
If people with your mentality do not have the integrity to make sober assessments hence your reply. Why not prove to us you have some integrity & OFFER solutions instead of bagging.
I have offered solution from a... hole to breakfast but the likes of you keep pushing the "look after me from cradle to grave" mentality.
Yes it was a Professor writing to the new PM not a sober thinking realistic thinking self-supporting citizen with a more stable mentality of what reality is all about. When a do-gooder mentions give it actually means give me. They want to look good by asking others to fork out for their idealistic schemes but never put their hands into their own pockets.

The Christian teachings of the Jesuits tell people to donate their own money to the poor - not other people's money.

Every dollar taken in tax is a dollar that cannot be given in charity as an expression of its owner's love and compassion.

Hey Ducky, you wouldn't have one of those prissy little beards yourself would you? It certainly is a good visual aid to advance warning that the wearer is totally & incorrectly convinced of their own importance.

Come on Colin, admit it. This is a joke isn't it? I just don't believe any one can be so well represented by their real name.

Could it really be Pain by mane, & pain by nature?

Nah, it's a joke!