Australia Aid

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• Economic growth, not foreign aid, is overcoming long-term poverty in the world.
  

• The amount in which Australia spends on overseas has doubled over the last two years and it predicted to double again. By 2015 Australia will be spending over $8billion a year helping people overseas.

• So it seemed like a good idea when Kevin Rudd announced a review of Australia's overseas aid program the report is about how to allocate and administer all the extra money. But neither the panel or the government could answer the main question asked about our aid program and the reason it's growing so fast.
  
• Spending money in ways that make difference doesn't help anyone. 

• Of course some aid really does help. Most obviously, emergency relief after disasters such as Indonesia's tsunami can save thousands. But this accounts for only 7 per cent of today's program.

•  The majority of our aid is supposed to help overcome long-term poverty.

• A billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day. 

• Poverty is being overcome. In 1981, 54 per cent of the world's people lived in extreme poverty. 2005 this had fallen to 25 per cent. In 2015 it will be less than 15 per cent.

• Any act of charity is, among other things, an assertion of power. Perhaps as power slips away, we feel more need to assert it.
  

The Author of this article has put forward some interesting points and statistics, and the overall feeling of this article is that Australia's aid program is kinda pointless as the countries that Australia are helping do not  necessarily need it, and can look after ourselves.   

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I think that Australia is giving more aid each year as the government believes they are in a better economic state than other countries, or to prove the Australia is becoming a powerful country. This allows Australia to build good relations with other countries. But with the good there is the bad as this now means that there is money not going into the Australian society, that they could spend on other things in Australia to make it a better place.