Yes Col. The unthinking left have never left their own dunghills and experienced other versions of life. It's all a matter of willingness to learn and listen. This collective and so-called progressive view of things is result of naivety and immaturity. I was brought up with left wing notions, but experience has taught me how silly the Left is, and how menacing to our way of life.

I was highly amused to be admonished to look at South American countries. Using South America as a yardstick for the West shows how far up their fundamental orifices some of these characters have their heads.

Col & Leigh,
Yes you two are like peas in a pod, if one of you is male and the other female, it would be a marriage made in hell..oh Leigh, who is throwing dung now...

"try to deny the fact that individuals can think and reason for themselves. They ignore the reality that individuals blossom with ideas and have the right to express individual views"

Give us a break Col, I can put up with your erotic facination with Maggie's underwear but this is a bit rich ol son. Since when was parroting conservative masturbations unique and original thought?

A fundamental flaw of conservatism is that it is unable to define its ideological charter - but is only able to tell you what it does not believe in.

And from this you argue that you practice a form of rugged individualism in thought? Wow!

Yes Leigh, you do belong to select and elitist flock of parrots who feed off each others droppings here in OLO. Feel proud and defiant mate, its all you've got and all you'll ever have.

Well, at least a quarter of the postings on this thread are actually relevant to the subject.

Some are certainly not befitting this high-quality forum.

I don’t understand why Australia can’t channel all of its international aid through the UN, and let their professionals decide how it is best utilised. I also can’t understand why, if Australia can suddenly come up with a billion dollars for tsunami victims, it can’t raise its overall aid contribution to at least the UN minimum recommended level of 0.7% of GDP.

O sorry, of course… the answer just became crystal clear: Australia does indeed spend most of its aid money on things related to its own interests…. and it isn’t going to spend any more than it needs to

Ludwig,
Correct mate, a compassionate Government with a budget surplus of $11 Billion could do many things with the extra tax money it has collected from us, some of the options are:

1. Provide the services to the taxpayers, which the taxpayers paid the tax to recieve.

2. Increase overseas aid to the recomended 0.7% of GDP, and have the UN distribute it to the most needy and desperate people.

3. Build public infastructure for future generations, such as dams with hydro electric power stations for sustainable development.

4. Invest in R&D on alternate energy sources to help reduce climate change, and also to save expense to the public for energy supply.

5. Provide a decent public Health and Education system to advance the nation.

Thanks for the article Tim.

Some very interesting issues raised, particularly the role of the For-Profit "aid" provider GRM, which from your description has a similar contracting arrangement with the Australian Government, to what Halliburton enjoys with the US Government!

My view is that aid should be purely for humanitarian purposes, not used as means of advancing our nation's economic interests. That said, we shouldn't send money to dodgy governments - the corruption in Indonesia and the Solomans being a good example of where as Ludwig suggests, aid should be directed through the UN.

I believe there is ample evidence to support Leigh's theory that the number of “experts” with an opinion about any problem will grow exponentially in relation to the amount of public funds available to research that problem". So if this is a given, then we should make sure that the experts are aid specialists, not trade specialists.

Seriously though, Australia's international reputation is poor enough already with our involvement in the Iraq War, our treatment of refugees, and our failure to act as a Global Citizen with respect to Kyoto (which despite its many flaws is still a reasonable first attempt to resolving this global issue). We should be trying to rebuild that reputation by rediscovering that supposedly Australian notion of a "fair go".

I'm been living in London for the last 4 months and it's interesting looking in at what's going on back home. Some ultruistic aid would do a lot for repairing our reputation.

Finally - to all the angry people - chill out, keep the debate clean, and look for similarities not differences in each others arguments. We may not all think the same way, but we are still all thinking. In a nation typified by apathy this is important to remember.

Cheers

Stuart