'Is it in humanity's best interests to just let mass starvation take place?'

Pro's and Con's to everything Belly.
Do you not think our allies the US use starvation as a method of war and to manipulate regime changes?

Who do you think suffers from sanctions?
Does Kim look like he goes hungry?
Who suffers when the US bans export of Persian carpets?

The puppet America is ruled by its Zionist masters, that's why the US can wage economic war against everyone, but BDS, well that's just wrong.

Dear Belly,

Foreign aid has always been a controversial issue.
There's those that argue - it's a "nice" thing to
do. There's those that argue - we should help
"our own" first. Some politicians feel that you
don't win cotes by funding foreign aid - that there's
more electoral wins associated with giving money to
health and education - and so it goes.

If it is electorally unimportant why does it even exist -
in the first place, we might well ask? We've been told
that it is in our strategic interest to give aid. That
it gives us a big amount of leverage over our neighbours
which makes policies like the PNG solution possible.

It's also true in a broader sense, for example - the
funding secular schools in Indonesia prevents the spread
of fundamentalist Islam. Plus it is a helpful thing to
do to try and support the countries around us by combating
poverty.

The idea that we can't afford to spend a fraction of our
wealth improving the lives of the poor - does not make
sense. As a free and democratic society (and a relatively
wealthy one) we have an obligation to be concerned with the
dignity of other human beings. We don't live in a vacuum.
We are inter-dependent on each other in this world.

Foreign aid is the logical outcome of our prosperous and
democratic culture and to threaten foreign aid is to
quietly begin to bring into question the humanism that
underpins that culture.

I'm sure that we all, as Australians, want to be part of a
country that values itself and how it contributes to the
world - not by its ability to reproduce an anachronistic,
isolationist, narrow-minded, smaller, provincial vision of
itself.

Indy,

Showing your ignorance as usual. The truck is mainly required to move surplus market garden produce to market. The day hire of a truck is $160 plus fuel, which is too much. The money is used to buy staples such as rice and chick peas, tea etc for the community.
Glad you mention roads, Chinese money has been provided to smooth out many of the hair pin bends, and reconditioning of the gravel roads. Which still require a 4WD, but are a lot better particularly in wet weather than they used to be. The work has mostly been carried out by the NZ road construction company Hogans using local labour.

If you want to talk about how good for Australia our foreign aid programs are, just look at Malaya. You could ask the families of those diggers killed preventing the communist taker over of Malaya what they think of helping our neighbours.

You could see in Lee Kuan Yew's attitude to Oz just how much influence those lives, & the handouts for years earned in respect or response.

Any aid should be only in Australian manufactured or grown product. As Oz makes stuff all these days, our only offering should be in locally grown food, & not too much of that either. As usual the lefties are generous with other peoples money.

until their society is as mad as ours.
Paul1405,
You conveniently failed to comment on the above line but got sucked in like a milkshake through a straw by the sarcasm.
I don't know what your experiences are but have lived on island communities for many,many years & my experience was that the more modern conveniences are provided free, the more was demanded until such time that the people became so dependent that now they can't do anything anymore themselves. Of course we outsiders who went in to make life supposedly easier for them are now condemned for destroying the cultcha. I imagine Fiji may now be different that the indigenous are becoming the minority.
Ring any bells ?

Armchair critic, Paul, Foxy all good points America is no longer a country to trust it may never be so again, aid is given for many reasons,I can make a case for most of them but humanity is the only reason I need Fiji, Paul a rather grubby ex fellow worker,no mate, went to that country on holiday, he came back with truly bad storys about poverty,we around the union table, not for the first or last time, chucked in a few bob, did the same this morning, buy a bail, at one of our big chains helping other if nothing else is rewarding, knowing you did.AC no right wing redneck here but for at least 50 years America has had only its own interests in mind never ever trust them