Climate change is the central poverty issue of our time. Oxfam is seeing the world’s most vulnerable – who have contributed least to climate change – already suffering most from its effects, facing greater droughts, floods, hunger and disease.
The issue of asylum seekers is, without a doubt, a complicated one. International law and emotive political rhetoric make it so. There are no hard and fast answers but there are, dare I say it, ways to truly move forward on the issue.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard won’t be attending a meeting of Pacific island leaders this week (Tuesday 3 and Wednesday 4 August) – despite the fact that she is currently at the helm of the Pacific Islands Forum.
It’s true that people in poor countries on our doorstep won’t be voting for either Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott later this month.
But Australians who care about doing the right thing will be. So it’s no reason for either of the leaders to abandon all mention, during this election campaign, of meeting Australia’s international obligations on climate change, or for not putting up policies that will genuinely reduce Australia’s emissions to the degree that is required.
No one likes to think of themselves as a fair-weather friend. Being flaky in a crisis is not, after all, an attractive quality.
But much as they might try to hide it when they meet in Canada this week, the world’s richest nations are proving themselves to be just that to the world’s poorest people: unreliable at a time when they are reeling from the economic crisis, climate change and food shortages.
The G20 is meeting this weekend at a crucial moment. Weighing on the minds of G20 leaders will be the European sovereign debt crisis, the continuing depth of the US recession and the lack of public financing following gigantic bail-outs to prop up the global finance sector.
One good news story to come out of Tuesday night’s Federal Budget was the increase to $4.3billion for Australia’s international aid program. You might not have realised this was a good news story because it was yet another example of the Rudd Government’s failure to communicate its achievements to the Australian public.
Whether you believe them or not, threats by the mining sector of a mass exodus overseas as a result of the resource rent tax expose a glaring gap in how Australian companies conduct business around the world.
The statues of Haiti’s heroes who led the slave revolt centuries ago are no longer visible. The square overlooking the now destroyed Presidential Palace has become a mass of makeshift shelters where families of earthquake victims try to put their lives together. The new shanty town which has sprung up obscures those national symbols of tumultuous change and great hope.
Nationals Senator Barnaby Joyce this week suggested Australia could make cuts to its overseas aid program to pay for services in Australia.