On a cold morning in Canberra in May this year, Alphonse affirmed this commitment in front of 1000 young people – “ambassadors” who had travelled to Canberra as part of the Make Poverty History Road Trip campaign. Alphonse told those assembled that: “Poverty of course is a crime. Poverty is discrimination. Poverty is worse than racism. Poverty is a social injustice. Poverty is a prison. Poverty is the destruction of human dignity. Poverty is a condemnation to death. I dream of that time when poverty is ended and I know it will be during my lifetime!”

Yet it was only two years earlier that Alphonse had arrived from francophone Benin, having fled there from Congo. Initial integration into Australian life was hard: he spoke French and was used to French customs and culture. Everything was different he says, “I had to get used to English at the hospital, I had to get used to English at university and at the supermarket.” But Alphonse made the decision to call Australia home and he decided to involve himself in school and university life. He was and still is determined to become a surgeon. He chose medicine because it “saves lives”; watching his mother undergo a series of operations crystallised his choice. Being a surgeon is “a way to serve the world in a better way”.

Personally, Alphonse has started to organise talks in Hobart to raise awareness of the situation in Congo and has a plan for a project to directly benefit 200 Congolese students who have been victims of war. When Alphonse is asked what drives him and keeps him focussed, he says it’s simple: “Poverty takes my entire concentration and I’ll keep fighting until I see a change.”

1. Place the rice together with 3 cups of water in a tightly lidded microwave-safe container with a capacity of about 2.5 L. Cook on high for 18 minutes. When it’s cooked, transfer the rice to a large wide bowl and fluff the grains with a fork.
2. Meanwhile, heat a wok or a large chef’s pan and cook the bacon over medium heat for 2–3 minutes. Add 1 tbs oil, along with the onion, garlic and ginger. Fry them gently until they are soft and fragrant, but not brown, then remove them from the wok.
3. Heat 1 tbs oil in the wok and add one lightly beaten egg. Swirl the egg around to create a thin omelette and season it with salt and white pepper. When the egg has set, remove the omelette from the wok, roll it up and slice it very thinly. Repeat with more oil and the other egg. While you’re waiting for the egg to set, cook the peas according to the directions on the packet.
4. Put the remaining oil in the wok over high heat. Add the rice and stir-fry it in the oil, then stir through the Chinese five-spice and soy sauce. When all the rice is well coated with soy and has a fairly dry consistency, add the egg, bacon, onion mixture and peas, and then toss to combine before removing the wok from the heat. Just before serving, stir through two thirds of the shallots. Serve the rice topped with the remaining shallots and the crispy shallots Note: Crispy shallots can usually be found in the Asian section of the supermarket.

Did you know?

• Rice plays a central role in feeding more than 3 billion people, including most of the world’s 1 billion poor.
• To plow 1 hectare of rice-planted land in the traditional way, a farmer and his water buffalo must walk 80 km.
• Rice is cultivated in over 100 countries and on every continent except Antarctica.

We need to talk about tax because of the Global Financial Crisis. In case you’re unfamiliar with the acronym, it refers to the massive global economic meltdown caused by large financial institutions. Trying to save financial institutions from themselves, and the quaintly named ‘’real economy’’ from the impact of the GFC, has cost governments a packet. The US and European central banks had to buy $US2.5 trillion of government debt and toxic assets in the greatest injection of liquidity the world has seen since David Boon’s 1989 Ashes flight to London.

Although Australia’s financial institutions fared better, the need for economic stimulus made it necessary for the government to install school buildings suitable for mounting plaques commemorating Julia Gillard. As a result, government debt is now somewhere between $200 billion and whatever figure Barnaby Joyce came up with today (probably closer to the former).

In short, governments across the world need to raise whopping amounts of revenue, not just to return to surplus and pay off national debt, but also to address urgent public spending priorities such as global poverty, climate change and study trips.

It is in this context that a global movement in support of a ‘Financial Transaction Tax’’ (FTT) or ‘’Robin Hood tax’’ has emerged. The FTT would be a very small levy just 0.05 per cent on transactions in financial markets. It would not apply to individual consumer transactions, but to transactions between financial institutions – things such as collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps, whatever they are. (The people trading them don’t know either).

The rate of the FTT is so low half a cent in every ten dollars it can’t reasonably be argued that it would deter substantive trading activity, not that financial institutions limit themselves to reasonable arguments. No self-respecting government would slug its real human taxpayers at such a pitiful rate. But that’s all that our delicate-petal financial institutions would have to cop. Nevertheless, the sheer volume of trading activity means the FTT could be quite the money spinner. It’s hard to estimate, but according to one massive abacus, the FTT would raise $1.5 billion a year in Australia, and up to $350 billion a year in the US.

If you don’t believe me, and I admit I’m probably one of the few people with less economic credibility than Barnaby Joyce, then listen to French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, or any one of the 350 economists from more than 35 countries – including Jeffrey Sachs and the Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman – who have signed a letter to the G20 calling for the introduction of an FTT. All of them support its introduction, as do other Australians far more reputable than me, such as World Vision boss Tim Costello and ethicist Peter Singer.

The Robin Hood Tax will give governments more money to pay off debt and fight poverty, and stabilise the financial system without deterring meaningful trade. Australia should take the lead in urging all G20 nations to adopt it.

The goal of cutting in half the proportion of people in the developing world living on less than $1 a day by 2015 remains within reach. However, this achievement will be due largely to the extraordinary economic success of Asian economies.

Achieving MDG Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

The abolition of school fees and other strategies to increase education access has resulted in an additional 34 million children receiving basic education in the developing world.

Achieving MDG Goal 3: Promote gender equality & empower women

Australia is actively supporting PNG women to take up leadership positions in government, business and education within their communities. Initiatives like training 330 district women’s facilitators on measures to support school boards of management and their local communities, covering most of the 3,000 primary schools in PNG.

Achieving MDG Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

A child born in a developing country is over 13 times more likely to die within the first five years of life than a child born in an industrialized country.

Achieving MDG 5: Improve maternal health

In Cambodia, Australia is helping train midwives. By mid 2009 at least one midwife was deployed in each health centre in the country, a significant improvement on 2008 when 79 health centres did not have a midwife. Delivery by trained birth attendants increased from 58 per cent in 2008 to 63 per cent in 2009.

Achieving MDG Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria & other diseases

Malaria is the world’s single largest killer of children and pregnant women.

Achieving MDG Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

Through the International Climate Change Adaptation Initiative, Australia has committed $328.2 million to address adaptation in vulnerable countries with a focus on Asia and the Pacific. Support includes scientific research to better understand the impacts of climate change on the natural and socio-economic systems of Pacific island countries; vulnerability assessments to help countries formulate appropriate adaptation strategies and plans; and specific assistance to help countries adapt to the immediate impacts of climate change.

Achieving MDG Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

Sweden, Norway and tiny Luxembourg all give more than 1% of their national income to aid – that’s three times as much as Australia gives

Yet while we all say that it would be wrong to walk past the child there are other children whose lives we could save just as easily — and we don’t. UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, estimates that nearly 9 million children under 5 die each year from causes related to poverty. That’s 24,000 a day — a football stadium full of young children, dying every day. Some die because they don’t have enough to eat or clean water to drink. More die from measles, malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia — diseases that don’t exist in developed nations, or if they do, are easily cured and rarely fatal.

Describing a case in Ghana, a man told a researcher from the World Bank: “Take the death of this small boy this morning, for example. The boy died of measles. We all know he could have been cured at the hospital. But the parents had no money and so the boy died a slow and painful death, not of measles but out of poverty.”

Most people living in affluent nations have money to spare, money that they spend on luxuries like clothes they don’t need, vacations in exotic places and even bottled water when the water that comes out of the tap is safe to drink. Instead of spending money on these things, we could give the money to an organisation that would use it to reduce poverty, and quite possibly to save a child’s life.

Of course, rescuing the child in the pond is not exactly the same as donating to an aid organization. There is only one child in the pond, and once we have saved him, we have solved the problem and need not think more about it. But there are millions of children in poverty, and saving one of them does not solve the problem. But saving one child is not less important because there are other children we cannot save. We have still saved a life, and saved the child’s parents from the grief that the parents of that boy in Ghana had to suffer.

While reducing global poverty is complex, some ways of saving human life are simple. We know that providing clean water and sanitation saves lives. We know that providing bednets reduces malaria, and immunising children stops them getting measles. We know that educating girls helps them to control their fertility, and leads them to have fewer children.

We who are fortunate to have more than enough have a moral obligation to help those who, through no fault of their own, are living in extreme poverty. It’s not hard to do.

Peter Singer

The poll showed that 64% thought Australia should match the commitment of most other rich developed nations and provide 0.7% of national income to aid. This amounts to just 70 cents in every $100 of income to help eradicate poverty.

For young people aged between 18 – 24 the level of support soared to 84%. This reflects the global perspective that is now part of everyday life for young people.  Young people live in a global world where communication on the web is not limited by national borders. What we have seen accompanying the globalisation of technology is compassion and understanding also going global.

However there was clear majority support for 0.7 from all age groups and all states. The over 55s and a  clear majority in every state supported the 0.7% of national income being committed to aid.

The poll shows that while the Labor and Liberal parties are slowly committing to do more to help eradicate poverty that they are lagging behind community expectations and sentiment on this issue

Love and Peace,
Nik from Nimbin

You’re part of a new sub-section of society, and it’s one that I can’t stand. Sure, your intentions are generally good, but they come from such a warped sense of reality that the chances of your actions affecting any real change are lower than Kevin Rudd’s future career prospects.

The current generation of Gen-X, Y and countless other letters of the alphabet are lost in a sea of middle class guilt, powerless to actually achieve anything laudable other than march down a clean, orderly city street, latte in hand, screaming something incomprehensible about war in a foreign land they were never aware of until it was featured on Getaway.

These are the people who attend giant free ‘awareness’ concerts, alongside thousands of fans paying nothing to dance to the latest indie-pop experimental audio-atrocities, all the while yelling at the government to end poverty. And for what? Where is the major shift in global power and domination that we were supposed to see by now?

The days of civil disobedience should have gone to their grave with the failure of the Vietnam war, together with a realisation that any amount of simple ‘awareness’ is not going to make any real difference to those that need it. I’m sure that a starving family in Pakistan really appreciated the $1 donation from the sale of the white wristband . They equally would have appreciated the $3.80 you spend on your afternoon Grande Latte with a dash of hazelnut, served in your fashionably-coloured, recycled, reusable coffee cup.

Give up now, you ABC-loving, Trotsky-inspired, latte-sipping, turtle-neck-wearing, perpetual-university-student, Green-voting lefties. Besides, we all know that history always repeats itself. We can work towards a world without poverty, but in the end, we’ll end up back where we started and it’ll be back to the stone age for us. And all because you wanted to wear a white wristband.

Ken Krank
(Address withheld)

I am writing to express my support for the goals of the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign, especially the call to increase aid to 0.7% of our Gross National Income in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals.

I found out about the campaign and the Millennium Development Goals a couple of weeks ago at a community forum with the local candidates in my electorate. Both candidates spoke of their support for foreign aid and their horror at the 1.4 billion people who live on less than $1.25 per day.

I had heard of the campaign a few years ago when my kids went to the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY concert but I guess that I had often thought that foreign aid wasn’t the most effective way of lifting people out of poverty. I’d heard stories about corruption and thought that aid was just driving unsustainable population growth in poor countries.

What I heard at the forum really changed my mind though. I find out that in the last twenty years we’ve actually halved the amount of people living below the poverty line. I also found out that the aid Australia gives has had a big effect in our region, especially in addressing polio. These stories warmed my heart and opened my eyes to the amazing things Australian aid workers do overseas.

The main thing that came home to me is that in the next couple of years, it is only going to get more important that we support efforts to reduce the amount of people living in poverty. There’s a few major summits coming up and there’s only 5 years until the Millennium Development Goals expire. It seemed to me the ideal time to increase foreign aid to 0.7% of our Gross National Income in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

With this in mind, I am inspired to do more to raise awareness of the MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign. I would encourage all to learn about the Millennium Development Goals and support the government increasing our foreign aid. It means a lot to me,

Betty Jones

Yarra Glenn