Wednesday July 19th, 2006. 3:56 pm by frog
No Right Turn has an analysis of New Zealand’s levels of Overseas Development Aid, prompted by an exchange between Keith Locke and Michael Cullen (on behalf of the Minister of Foreign Affairs) in the House yesterday.
Bob Geldof is right - New Zealand’s performance in this area is shameful.
Posted in Economy, Work, & Welfare | Justice & Democracy | Parliament | by frog | Wed, July 19th, 2006 |
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July 19th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Although NZ has a proportionately high level of private donations to aid organisations as I understand it. This could well be zero sum, if more government aid is given, it means higher taxes and less discretionary income for some to spend on private aid. A country should not be condemned by a wealthy one-hit-wonder rock star when its NET contribution may in fact be more generous than most - it doesn’t matter whether aid comes from the state or individuals.
July 19th, 2006 at 11:09 pm
I believe the government could easily help with this situation by removed the limit on charity tax rebates.
The school (fee) donations that we pay for our children consume the vast majority of our donation rebate limit, before we even have a chance to add our CCF child donations.
Raising this limit would encourage a lot more private donations and would, in effect, be a way for the government to ‘help’ with aid.
July 20th, 2006 at 12:37 am
an interesting aspect of this one is that the media has..in the main..ignored geldofs’ admonitions..save from first reporting them..
bugger all discussion/debate..eh..?
but the facts must be faced…our government has that/our working/lower middle-class ethos of ‘every-dog-for-themselves’ writ large…
and that transfers through to our governments (and ours..?..) meanspirited attitudes to international aid…
(and don’t give me that load of old flannel about our ‘peace-keeping(?)’ efforts being overseas aid…(ahem..s.i.s…anyone..?..)..
those efforts are in the main an international butt-kiss on our part…for a list of reasons..of which..aid for those less lucky/privileged than us..is way down…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 20th, 2006 at 12:39 am
(ahem)..make that s.a.s….not s.i.s…
but…on second thoughts…
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 20th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Stuff readers have their say on the Geldorf aid issue
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3736062a4621,00.html
July 20th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
Phil
“the media has..in the main..ignored geldofs’ admonitions..save from first reporting them” - yeah I’d noticed that too!
To an even bigger extent I’ve noticed the same thing, an eerie kind of silence in the media about Israel’s bombing of Lebanon. Sure, they’re reporting all the facts, and giving them a pretty high profile (as they should) which is great…
… but there has been an absence of the usual fretting and yakking over our government’s response, an absence of the ‘human interest stories’, an absence of the lame analysis of the situation by ’strategic experts’, an absence of anyone encouraging the punters to ‘have your say’… (all the chaff we got following the London bombings, or any of the other attacks on ‘us’).
It’s almost as if the news media know that the only logical conclusion they could come to, were they to attempt to draw some links or attempt some kind of analysis, would be that Israel’s attack is blatantly evil, indiscriminate, counterproductive, inhumane, criminal ….etc. Which is the obvious truth that the USA is uneasily turning a blind eye to (meaning Clarky will do the same, until everybody else has made their moves and she can remain safely unnoticed in the international pack).
They’re treating the events a little like a natural disaster, in a way - report the facts on the ground, report the responses of international players, report it as the aftermath of an act of god, report anything so long as it you steer clear of the fact these bombings are HUMAN action. Ignore the reality that someone is creating this situation, therefore something can be done to stop it, therefore perhaps little old NZ should be discussing and forming a response, an opinion…
(but of course its not just the media..the EU, the rest of the world, seem to be looking on awkwardly, presumably thinking “shit, this is terrible, we should probably be doing something…except israel is a friend of a friend so we can’t”).
Keith Locke is once again the welcome exception (good on him..although I haven’t noticed his press releases getting picked up by the news, unsurprisingly…)
I guess the question is - does it matter? Usually I get pissed off at the crap which is notably absent this time. That is, the mainstream media’s role as “opinion maker” and “political agenda pusher” (see tax cuts, see benson-pope, see dramatically capitalised “We Shall Never Forget This Moment” newspaper headlines every time anyone lets off a bomb in a western country…).
Sorry about the complete off-topic ness, but I hadn’t seen any relevant frogblog post. What do you all think? Should we be happy with the neutral BBC-style fact-reporting we’re seeing in the NZ news regarding Lebanon? Or am I getting it wrong in thinking what Israel is doing is a big deal and thus highly newsworthy? Dammit, they’re bombing everything, everywhere…I can’t understand why no-one is interested…?
July 20th, 2006 at 8:14 pm
Tom…do you think there should be a fully fledged forum on the greens site, not just a blog, then you could have started a new thread rather than ‘hijack’ one.
You’ve hit the nail on the head, clarifying the weird feeling I’ve had following this issue, it does indeed seem like “Natural disaster” coverage.
This war, lopsided with it’s 10 to 1 fatality ratio, does seem different to conflicts gone by. Where is the talk of economic sanctions against Israel? How can Israel say (demand) that it is too early for a cease fire and international peacekeeping involvement? Too early, in that they still have preplanned unfinished work to do? Work sanctioned by Bush it seems.
If for example our cricket team were to be playing in Israel soon, would there be a similar level of protest to that against Zimbabwe?
Susan Woods is on the TV at the moment exchanging niceties with a “lucky evacuee”. Her happy smile and hearty banter in contrast to, say, the sombre tones she used following the Mumbai bombing of little more than a week ago (a tragedy now fading fast into the annals of history, the NZ news having squeezed in several murders a war and a major tsunami in the interim).
The media are avoiding asking the difficult questions and choosing not to cover the nasty festering side of Israel’s neoblitzkrieg. No coverage dissecting the validity of Israel’s response, no coverage of the humanitarian disaster. Destroyed power plant… no electricity, food spoils, no water purification, overpopulation, the heat of a desert summer… not a pretty story unfolding there. No we’ll just lightly brush over that stuff shall we and focus on the success stories from “those that made it out”.
This war and the international reaction to it is… bizarre. But then again we can expect more unorthodox, overt, less than subtle, outside of protocol behaviour from certain nations in the coming years, especially when it involves those Middle East states unfortunate enough to find themselves situated atop OUR hydrocarbon lifeblood. Israel in it’s capacity as 51st state, western outpost on the margins of the strategic resource war zone, will see a fair bit more action I’d wager.
July 21st, 2006 at 9:49 am
James W wants to make a comment “on the Geldof debacle” but can’t find his username or password, so here it is on his behalf:
I speak as someone who has worked as an aid worker as well as a trader to the same “needy� countries. I know that the reception of advice and good will from both sides is hugely different in the two scenarios; with aid it is a gift often without good management, with trade it is a recognition of the equality of both parties.
I also know that Geldof comes over here from a part of the world where trade barriers are the norm. It is these trade barriers and tariffs which are the cause of much of the depression in “developing� countries. New Zealand has
shown that life without tariffs can work, and this forces us to trade more broadly and effectively, showing true acknowledgement of our trading partners.
Fine for aid to be made available for natural disasters, but let fair trade rule where the disasters are created by the rich and powerful.
To Bob Gledof I would say go home and fix the moat in your own eye.
July 21st, 2006 at 1:59 pm
What’s shameful is that the government has any foreign development aid budget at all.
July 21st, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Tom/Kane,
I’ve noticed the imbalance in newspaper images also.. where Israeli grief has shown there have been human images (family comforting sister of dead IDF soldier), but where Lebanese were affected, just wrecked building with onlookers.. no heartstring message. Until today - first image in DomPost of wounded Lebanese girl.
I put it down to the fact one side has very well organised lobbying and pressure groups which are sure to give editors a hard time if they step out of line.
July 24th, 2006 at 8:48 am
hello frog…!..
you haven’t hopped out of your tank…and are drying up on the floor..?…
are you..?…(croak three times if you need any help..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
July 25th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
What bugs me about the coverage of Lebanon, apart from the ignorance of the country (the mention of Syria providing a “land bridge” between Iran and Lebanon amused me - didn’t they look at a map?), is the twinned themes of “The middle east is all so confusing and impossible to understand” and “Gosh, they’re all as bad as each other, ancient hatreds, etc. tsk, tsk…”
I notice the figures in the Dominion Post this morning give Israel’s civilian and military deaths as being roughly equal, while in Lebanon it’s about ten civilians to every soldier killed, yet still commentators rail against Hizbollah terrorists and refer to Israel attacking military targets.
Of course, it’s all Hamas and Hizbollah’s fault for hiding behind civilians by having offices in cities, for driving cars and other dastardly tricks. They should fight fair by moving their infrastructure into compounds in the desert, clearly marked with the word “terrorists” in large white letters on all vehicles and buildings and tattooed on their forheads. Israel can then invite all non-tattoed Palestinians to come back and peacefully reclaim their land.
July 25th, 2006 at 1:11 pm
Oh, by the way, Scott, when you call funny old Geldof a one-hit wonder, what was the hit?