The Travels of the
Techno-Freedom-Fighter

I just got back from a talk that I did for the Queanbeyan Evening View Club. Mum has been a member for a long time and I tend to do a talk there every once and a while on my last posting. This was the first opportunity that I had to talk about my last posting to PNG from November 2006 until February 2007. it was just ment to be a informal slide night where I get to talk about being chased down the road by people with machetes :(. I will have to admit that I was surprised that the audience of suburban middle-aged women where really switched on about the topic of International Development. The basic idea is that International Development is all about the fight against poverty.

The fight against poverty may appear daunting but the efforts arising from the Millennium Declaration in 2000 shows what can be done when the world works together to solve a global challenge. The Declaration gave rise to the establishment of eight Millennium Development Goals targeting key indicators of development, including extreme poverty and hunger, education, gender equality, child mortality, and disease control.

Progress against these goals has been encouraging but more needs to be done if we are not to fall short of achieving the Goals by 2015. The Australian Government has committed to spending 0.7 percent of Gross National Income on overseas development assistance (ODA), yet did not set a timeline for when this level of spending would be reached. Our level of ODA as a proportion of Gross National Income is currently 0.3 percent.

The Australian Government's in-principle commitment to increasing aid expenditure to 0.7 percent of Gross National Income extends all the way back to a 1975 United Nations General Assembly resolution but was more recently affirmed at the 2002 International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey, Mexico.

Australia has not yet set a timeline for the achievement of that spending level, unlike five countries that have already met that level and 16 that have committed to reach it by 2015. Australia's ODA as a proportion of Gross National Income is currently 0.3 percent, significantly below even the OECD average of 0.46 percent.

This stands in stark contrast to the generosity of Australians, who are the second most generous amongst the 22 OECD countries when it comes to private giving. This corresponds with growth in the number of people who approve of official development assistance and who feel that Australia should spend more on aid.

Focus development resources intensively on high-priority nations, with the intent of achieving a more rapid and sustained improvement in economic and social conditions for example work towards an increase in basic health & education and the availability of micro-credit. We should support further cancellation of developing country debt. As well as work for the resumption of multi-lateral talks aimed at the further reduction of trade barriers.