Philo,

Well, there you go - that is a very un-Christian and insular sentiment that you just displayed.
Do you not consider it right that countries in the "rich West" offer ongoing development assistance in the form of overseas aid?
Many of the countries you listed have been on the receiving end of imperial exploitation and aggression in one form or another.
Are you suggesting that we just pull the ladder out from under them whenever we have a challenge on the homefront?

To quote you from another thread:
"The lawmakers assume we are selfish and uncaring of others plight, when the great Aussie spirit reaches out to our brothers hurting. The principle of the 10 commandments is Love the highest aspects of character and your fellow humans as yourself."

Some correspondents

To this forum redefine

"Christian charity"

Philo old mate you have told us your age.
You come from a time we all believed in Christ, feared him in fact.
He via his followers owned us, but we thought good thoughts about him.
Love forgiveness, promises.
You may dislike this, but generation after generation of people like you, helped us slip the chains of fear and control.
You are just one, tens of Christians, some from my own past infect my e mails with? what can only be described as HATE.
We give to over seas ,your Christ told us to.
You know,please say you do, our governments bill is BILLIONS NOT MILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Is your God Your faith under so much threat from a Labor government you must avoid truth to defend it?
How much is Gillards honesty in telling us she, like me, is not a believer got to do with uncharitable HATE coming from some Christians.
Break free you young folk see the once uniter of men as it now is, politics has blinded Christianity.

Philo's little list is very illuminating:

“Indonesia - $ 458.7 million
Papua New Guinea - $ 457.2 million
Solomon Islands - $ 225.7 million
Afghanistan - $ 123.1 million
Vietnam - $ 119.8 million
Philippines - $ 118.1 million
East Timor - $ 102.7 million
Cambodia - $ 64.2 million
TOTAL = $ 1,669 million -to be given away in 52 weeks
..but wait, there’s more... • Australia provides approximately 150,000 tonnes of food aid every year—about $65 million—to
Bangladesh, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Sudan and Chad.
• In 2010-2011 the Australian Government plans to spend almost $4.4 billion on development assistance to under developed countries.”

Especially if you juxtapose it with the following (common quip) from another thread):

“ The amount of money we give away to colonies we formerly exploited and often left baron, btw, is such a miserable token it's more an insult and source of embarrassment than anything to complain about.We spend more on fireworks!” [no amount of aid, or reason, will ever change that mindset!]

And with, the observation that every time the underdeveloped nations turn up to functions like Copenhagen or a Cancun all they seem interested in is more freebies.

Conclusion:charity begins at home--when we have covered all or own needy then think about oversea aid.

We don't know if TA will make a good PM, what we do know is that JG does not as she is so out of touch it's not funny.

Example. When a flood assistance package was first announced there was a threashold set at $48K combined income. You're Kidding!

How on earth can two people, earning little more than the dole be home owners in the first place.

So, all of a sudden we find yet another 'foot in mouth knee jerk reaction' so what does she do, she doubles it.

Yet further evidence this government is totally out of touch.

I think her policy making device may well be a spinning wheel with the likes of 'yes, no, maybe' etc on it.

You know, if you wish to become captain of the team, you should at least be better than the captain you dethroned!

Perhaps this is a chance for those independents to rethink thier actions that led to this unstable government we now have in place.

Where are the likes of a 'Bob Hawlk', 'John Howard' or even a 'Jeff Kennet' when we need them!

You know, people who actually got things done.

"How on earth can two people, earning little more than the dole be home owners in the first place"

What is your point. The money is not going to home owners. You are wrong, people on low incomes can own homes. Sometimes they inherit from their parents.

I think you might be talking about the level of income to receive state benefits to repair ypur home.