Close The Gap, the biggest campaign in Australia’s history to narrow the gap in life expectancy between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population and other Australians, welcomes today’s announcement by Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd of additional funding for Aboriginal health services.
‘The rich are only tolerable so long as their gains can be held to bear some relation to roughly what they have contributed to society’, so Robert J. Samuleson of The Washington Post recently paraphrased English economist John Maynard Keynes.
2007 is the final year of the Oxfam Challenge and the last chance for Australians to cycle through China, Cambodia and Vietnam while supporting Oxfam programs. Over 300 people have visited Oxfam projects this way over the last 4 years. Part altruism and part adventure, the Oxfam Challenge is open to anyone with a reasonable level of fitness and the desire to make a difference.
Following today’s announcement by World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz of his resignation, international development agency Oxfam is calling for the next leader to be appointed based on merit, through an open and accountable process.
The health crisis affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will continue to be ignored as a result of yesterday’s budget, warns Oxfam Australia.
The Federal Government’s 2007 budget failed to take the necessary steps to close the 17 year gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians with only minor increases in Aboriginal health spending, said the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and Oxfam Australia.
Australia’s growth in Fairtrade products such as coffee is ranked the fastest in the world with sales up at least 50 per cent on last year to $8 million, according to Oxfam Australia as Fairtrade fortnight kicks off.
Last week’s decision by the Government of Norway to instruct its $350 billion national pension fund not to invest in a mining company whose Australian-based subsidiary Emperor Mines has dumped thousands of tonnes of toxic waste into the rivers of Papua New Guinea is a warning to all mining companies who foul up the environment and destroy livelihoods that fewer investors tolerate their actions, said Oxfam Australia.
Any national diabetes plan agreed by the Council of Australian Governments must include a central focus on combating diabetes among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, according to the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and Oxfam Australia.
In the last week intense media attention has focused on the challenge Australia faces to close the gap in life expectancy between Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders and other Australians. It’s hard to be believe but impossible to deny that Indigenous Australia live nearly 20-years less than the rest of us.