A Tale of Two Brothers

Currently there is a G20 economic summit in Melbourne, where the finance ministers and central bank governors of the 20 most developed nations. The host is Australia's Treasurer, Peter Costello.

One of the items on the agenda is addressing global poverty. The Reverend Tim Costello, Peter's brother, is Chief Executive Officer of World Vision Australia, and Campaign Co-Chairman of Make Poverty History. He's criticised the Australian Government for failing to meet it's commitment to provide 0.7% of GDP as foreign aid. According to Tim Costello, Australia ranks 19th out of the top 22 developed nations when comparing the proportion of GDP given out as foreign aid. Peter Costello prefers to focus on the the raw dollar amount of foreign aid given by the Australian Government, which is an impressive-sounding $3 billion this year.

The media of course is relishing this public debate between to high-profile brothers, for example ...

Costello brothers argue over Australia's aid record

So who would you trust, a politician or a humanitarian :) Personally, when you get down to brass tacks, the Reverend Tim Costello gets my vote.

Here is an overview of the situation, with quotes from an interview on the ABC's Lateline
Tony Jones speaks with Tim Costello

[T]he global plan called the Millennium Development Goals ... we signed up. That is where we promised 0.7 per cent and haven't kept our promise...
Back in 1970 when all the developed nations said we're going to aim to give 0.7 per cent, that's 70 cents in every $100 of GNI. We said yes. At Monterey 2002, at Rio 2000 we repeated it. In August 10th, 2005 last year in Parliament, Alexander Downer repeated and said we are committed to 0.7. The problem is all the other countries, developed countries, have set a timetable and have moved towards it. Britain is at 0.49 per cent and France 0.47 per cent. Even when we get to what Peter has promised, the doubling of aid by 2010, we will still only be at 0.38 per cent whereas the average for all of the developed countries today is 0.45 cents.

We seem to be good at signing these internatinal agreements, but not acting - just look at the Kyoto Protocol, which we've actually signed but declined to ratify.

Another disturbing quote from the interview:

$400 billion approximately has been spent by the US in the Iraq war... The world developed countries only give $100 billion a year to the total one billion people living on less than $1 a day and 30,000 children die each day.

Fortunately the Australian citizens have been happy to take up the slack left by our Government's thrift. We are second only to the Irish in private donations to foreign aid agencies.