Monday, June 18, 2007

REPLY TO THE FEDERAL BUDGET

What follows is taken from TEAR Australia's e-newsletter on Advocacy and Action


TEAR's post-budget campaign email encouraged changemakers to write letters to the editor, or contact talkback media, to put forward concerns about the aid program. We wanted to ensure that in the frenzy of analysis of tax cuts, and tertiary endownment funds, and the like, that our fundamental obligations to assist the poorest people and countries was not lost:

Not many people know that when our Prime Minister signed on to the Millennium Development Goals and agreed to help cut global poverty in half by 2015, he said that he would 'spare no effort to free more than a billion men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty.' Sadly, every budget since he signed on to that declaration in 2000 has spared plenty of effort in the fight against poverty.

TEAR Australia doesn't have a sophisticated media analysis machine, but I am aware of two letters from TEAR supporters that were published in the Sydney Morning Herald, two that were published in The Age, and one in the Canberra Times. And it's a fair bet that there were letters published (and comments aired) that I'm not aware of. A fair bet, too, that for every letter published there were several received that weren't chosen.

So, thank you! Together we are shaping a public debate in favour of a more generous and poverty-focused aid program.

Speak out for those who cannot speak, for the rights of all the destitute.
Speak out, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.

Proverbs 31:8-9

posted by Sae @ Monday, June 18, 2007 Comments: 0