Drought, pockets of poverty, a need to put in place a water delivery infrastructure, a run-down hospital system, senior citizens in need of dental care, carers being paid as little as 64cents per day, native refugees in one of the territories etc. Australian aid needs to find its way to Australia.

Agreed, not that this means much in our present democratic set up.
A media run effort with the media controlled in many ways by the Government, a media quite prepared to use emotional inaccurate headlines for profit whose ideology is the market not people, in part fed by a Government whose attitude is typified in this article.

New or is it reimposition of old Colonialism.

Reminds me of a previous Governor General, “I will not be de de de deterred ”

Similarly we shall impose democracy and law in the interests of free trade and local security. Australia’s. As we have helped do in Iraq after defanging a hyped up tyrant, after finding no remnants of the WMD’s, the West had in the main supplied.
Here a before hand study of tribal religious and racial structure was made in great depth before embarking on our Crusade! The consequences of this study are with us still!

Comes to a crunch corporations interested may employ mercenaries to achieve our purpose as is happening in Iraq.
Nothing two way about it!

Mark Thompson’s second paragraph is naïve, if he really believes in his criteria for foreign aid; or, he is saying that no aid should be given.

Foreign aid is a much for Australia’s benefit as it is for the basket case countries receiving it. So, take away the requirements that Thompson believes should not be attached to aid, and there will be no aid.

Given the insults and ineffectiveness of Australia’s aid to mendicant countries in the Pacific, no aid would be a good idea. The money saved could be transferred to the defence budget to better protect Australia when sinister regimes more to the liking of Somare and Co. provide foreign aid with their conditions attached.

Foreign aid is about Australia’s security in the region. Let’s have some honesty and take steps to protect ourselves from belligerent oafs and concentrate on real defence rather than tolerating the nonsense currently coming out of PNG and East Timor, and giving them aid on top of it

Mark, well said!
The pure dry logicians at Canberra are detached from reality. Furthermore, the think-thanks that the Howard Government relies on are more concerned with "devilopment" instead of "development" that results in "progress and mutual respect" at the end of the day.

We cannot continue to be kiddened anymore. Keep your AID for the drought and water crises back home. The subsistence people of PNG and other Pacific Islands countries will live happily off their land, sea and whatever there is left to it.

The shadows of colonialism are still upon us superior Westerners whether we like it or not?

1. In the Middle East we are still trying to push our superiority there in the guise of aid, or as with the Americans in Iraq, making a mess of promises of Western democratic ideals. That is why we Westerners resent Iran so much which being Persian, not Arab, is successfully going it alone with only technical help for a time from the West. But help from little Westernised Israel - No - especially as Israel has been made a far bitter enemy of Iran by America allowing the Israelies the use of nuclear weaponry. All what is now known as Western neo-colonial tactics, Choose your colonial partners.

2. Neo-colonialisn is also upon us Australians because it still haunts Melasia as well as island nations like Fiji, where more educated persons from India were and still allowed to a certain extent, clerical jobs, and even command positions in preference to native peoples. And islands like Fiji being such exciting places for tourists, it is understandable that many of those of original island stock would be more concerned about foreign command positions, than making tourist dollars.

3. Our mature-age study group has also been told by an Australian nurse who was working in Saudi-Arabia, how there is preference even among the Saudi leaders to bring in Westerners for most skilled positions rather than using their own. As bin Laden is or was a Saudi, it should give us an inkling into the reason for his rebellious activities. Overdone to our Western minds, naturally.

4. Neo-colonialism is also shown by corporate giants acting not much different to colonial collossals like the Hudson Bay and East India Companies, the latter which finished up running the whole of Ceylon with a hundred thousand British-trained native troops under company control. The American trained Contras in Sandinista were under a style of corporate control also.

When we think deeply about it, us superior Westerners haven’t really changed much, have we

It doesn't look as though Dr.Thompson managed to accomplish much during his ten years in PNG if the current state of affairs is any indication.
It seems to me that all the aid that is given to these countries ends up in the hands of the people at the centre of the government, so we might as well just turn them loose to manage their own affairs as they did before we inflicted ourselves upon them. Then they will have no one to blame but themselves for what goes wrong or conversely they will be able to pat themselves on the back if things turn out all right.
I am not holding my breath though.

The writer seems to ignore the fact that

Living in a dream world seems to be a problem too, as to give aid without any conditions is outrageous, and I believe that this shows the writer's political stance, that is, of seeing non-whites as some sort of disabled children.

Why else would it not be desireable to have such societies like PNG, the Soloman's, transcend their backward cultural practices of having child brides for elders, widespread corruption, and so on?

Only one who believes they should always remain static, never evolving, would think this.

I see them as our equals, who should be treated as we would treat ourselves. This means that ALL aid needs to be followed so that we know it's not corrupted, used to buy porsches for officials, and the like.

To think of this as colonialism is outrageous, but more importantly, laughable.

While those who espouse a genetic superiority are on the lunatic fringe, the morality of the western world, the values it embodies, are most definitely superior to those of tribal Arab, tribal indigenous, Asian, and African societies.

How can anyone disagree with such sentiment?

Benjamin, you have given revelation to a truth all social scientists so very well know. One of the greatest failings of colonialism has been the bringing in permanently of more cultured labour to take on positions that the younger islanders should have been, and still haven't been properly trained for.

The trouble was, that colonialism mostly rather than a righteous effort to help backward peoples improve their cultures, was still classed as a God-given right over an inferior culture, not much better than the ancient Greeks, and even the way the early Christians treated slavery