Foreign aid, what a dirty word that is. I saw some of the damage that did in PNG.

Foreign aid should only ever be Oz manufactured goods, never money.

We were giving them hundreds of millions a year, in the 70s when a million was a lot. Quite a bit was used to buy plantations from the Ozzie planters, & give them to the villagers. The villagers had never had anything to do with these plantations, even the labour was imported from other districts.

These plantations quickly went from 30 ton a month to just a couple of tons. When your village is a hundred or even just 25 miles from any town or trade store, with the only transport canoe or feet money is not of much interest, once the plantation trade store is gone.

When the diesel runs out, & the batteries go flat, there are no power tools or sewing machines. The radio no longer works, so you can’t order anything to cone on the copra boat, if it is still calling, & you can’t call for help in an emergency. The airstrip will be growing trees, so help couldn’t come quickly anyway.

All this from giving “AID” in money. Can you guess it was administered by bureaucrats & academics.

rehctub,

The following are NOT rhetorical questions:

What will it take to convince you that curbing our spending (at this stage of the economic cycle) is what destroys the prosperity?

What will it take to convince you that government debt is NOT a burden on future generations?

What will it take to convince you that, as long as we stick to the current policy of only borrowing in Australian dollars, we can never go broke? And that as long as our dollar's value is determined by the market not the government, there's no danger of collapse?

These things are important; our policies should not be based on fear of impossible events.

As for your proposals:
Unemployment below 5% should be the norm. When it isn't, we need to adjust economic policy rather than immigration rates.

Instead of preventing people going onto welfare when they need it, spending excessive time on welfare should delay people's eligibility for the age pension.

Our foreign aid should not be limited by short term budgetary constraints.

Emergency aid is needed whenever there's an emergency, medical aid is similarly urgent, promotion of democracy and human rights should pay for itself many times over in reduced need for military spending, and development aid is strongly in our long term interest. We should be increasing our aid spending, not cutting it. Of course we must avoid a repeat of the situation Hasbeen's described, but UIVMM the days of untargetted aid money are long gone.

And your end thought is completely wrong: household debt is higher now than a decade ago, having gone from 104% of GDP to 125% a year ago before sliding to 123% (see http://www.tradingeconomics.com/australia/households-debt-to-gdp )

Hi rehctub. I also agree to your opinion but do you think immigration can actually be eradicated? This is what I'm not really sure about.

Hi ttbn, i hope this could be handle in a proper ways too but aren't sure if immigration can totally be stopped.

Hi Is Mise, what do you mean by defecate? lol... so funny you.

Rollyz, Is Mise...was that a "typoo ?"

Glad we don't have too many spelling/grammar Nazi's on OLO. : )