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Seneca made a comment 2000 years ago "Religion is considered by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful" Samoa please reject this.......it will open the door to all sorts of mischief...... you cant protest against God.......if the leaders of your country decide to make rules based on biblical laws then bit by bit freedoms that are taken for granted will be eroded....

The very limited funding for Sub Saharan Africa is very short-sighted. Many of the countries have acute needs. Some Australian private sector investment is flowing, but Australia as a whole risks missing out on the trade and investment opportunities that will arise as SSA grows.

What happens when the head of state is a Baha'i as was the case with the late Malietoa?

Thanks Janet - good to read you again.

Based on recent experience Solomon Islanders have a distrust of Chinese business people. It would Bi interesting to hear suggestions of how we can overcome this distrust and begin to build relationships with the Chinese government.

Thanks for asking this question Matt: Why has the Coalition cut foreign aid (again)? I think it is because it can, and because it makes life easier for the Coalition. No government is ever going to fall, nor be elected, on the basis of their aid policy. It is too small a part of the budget and too remote in its impact for most electors, even sympathetic ones, to see it as crucial to their vote. Although aid is a tiny part of the total budget it can make a significant difference to the level of the all-important budget deficit and it is one of the few areas the government has free rein to cut at will. If the Coalition had not cut aid and had followed the Labor timetable the aid budget would be $5bn higher this year (at 0.5% of GNI) – that would add 17% to the 2017-18 projected deficit. The importance of the budget balance to aid budget levels can be seen in the evaporation of the bipartisan 0.5 commitment when the budget surplus disappeared. Fore more detail on the impact of debt and deficit on the aid budget see: https://devpolicy.org/achieving-larger-australian-aid-program-will-require-broader-budget-changes-20160307/ I’m with Peter Graves here. Those who want to see more aid need to ensure that this major disincentive to aid expansion is removed. This means ensuring that the Government has adequate resources to fund our international commitments AND balance the budget. This involves making sure that adequate levels of taxation are collected and that middle class welfare is contained. Aid advocates would have a very strong campaign working for this with our natural allies – the many groups working for greater domestic welfare and equality in Australia.

These are quite interesting arguments that your are bringing up. However, in as much as you speak more of expats and categorizes them in the manner Marcus does, have you put much thought in the experiences of the indigenous people who are employed by implementing agencies for various duties. How are their lives supposed to be, what are their thoughts about the lifestyles of the people working in NGOs? Someone once said 'in as much as we are trying to bring the local communities out of poverty, we are left progressively poorer as employees.' Let's tackle that one.

Thanks Matthew for this analysis which is spot on. Interestingly politicians always seem to find aid funding problematic whether the budget is in deficit or not. When we have good growth and the budget is getting larger they say they can't increase aid sufficiently because the growth is too great, and it would be too big an increase (wait for this one when we do return to surplus!) . I think Peter Graves' reminder that the Tobin Tax could have a win-win outcome - reducing speculative money transfers and increasing budget revenues - but we'd still have to win over politicians that such revenue should be directed to aid. Matthew Dornan is right - there is almost no political cost to cutting aid. The poor leadership in this country is a major problem. Good leaders do what is right & bring the people with them. We see little or no attempt to do this from leading politicians. Instead they mostly kowtow to the opinion polls, having done little or nothing to reshape those opinions, or do the right thing despite them..

Thanks for this comprehensive rebuttal and demonstration of why Australia gives aid. Unfortunately, economic advice in Australia prioritises balanced budgets and the acts of “government” have become a simple annual accounting exercise. No-one seems to have innovative advice about finding new sources of revenue, after the negative outcomes of the "mining tax". An alternative is a new (Tobin) Tax of about 0.01% applied to high-frequency foreign exchange transactions. Several years ago, the Chairman of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) claimed that “Australia is being picked off by highly-leveraged, online foreign exchange brokers”. [http://www.smh.com.au/business/markets/currencies/asics-greg-medcraft-says-foreign-exchange-brokers-are-picking-off-australia-20150322-1m499a.html] The Reserve Bank calculated FOREX trades in April 2013 averaged US$182 billion each day. By contrast, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade reported Australia’s two-way trade in 2012 was $623.8 billion, or about 4 days FOREX trading. This suggests over 90 per cent of these trades are speculative. Taxing the speculators also means extra revenue for health care, aged care, education and our aid budget, for child immunisation, clean water and education. In 2015, The Australia Institute estimated that a Tobin Tax (on a different source) could raise about A$1 billion each year: “While many designs are possible, tax of between 0.01 per cent to 0.4 per cent on all wholesale capital market secondary transactions would discourage excessive speculation and market manipulation without distorting the primary function of the market. The rate could depend on the instrument in question and would be adjusted every five years in response to changing market conditions. A well designed Tobin tax could significantly reduce costs for workers with superannuation accounts and retail investors, as well as improving the functioning of capital markets and raising significant government revenue”. http://www.tai.org.au/sites/defualt/files/P134%20Australia’s%20Tobin%20Tax%20arguments%20and%20evidence_0.pdf The very traditional argument against a Tobin Tax is that it would distort the free markets. Yet other revenue sources have so easily disappeared into Panamanian companies and the banks are now being held to account by ASIC for distorting the market in interest rates:“The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) launched a Federal Court action against Westpac for unconscionable conduct in relation to the bank’s involvement in setting the bank bill swap reference rate (BBSW) over a two-year period between April 2010 and June 2012. The action followed similar charges bought by ASIC against the ANZ Bank last month".http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-06/asic-hauls-westpac-into-court-on-rate-rigging-regulations/7302340 While many arguments are put forth first about the decline in aid, then the need to increase it (eg your reasons above), few seem to address the need to increase federal Government revenues - innovatively. Taxing unproductive financial speculation seems a good start ?

Oops. Sorry, my estimate of savings from not increasing aid in line with inflation was way out. If we assume that rather increasing aid in line with inflation (as laid out in the last budget's forward estimates) we instead hold aid at its nominal 2016-17 level, in fact the savings are not $385 million over four years but over $900 million. This assumes inflation of about 2.5%. Even if this is adjusted downwards, that is a much larger sum which could be used in any aid-security swap.

Very sad and story of my home Province,Gulf. Thank you for this blog. We have a lot of work to do to turn the tide course for appropriate development slowly and progressively to meet the real world of changing times.

professor, i think the institution is not important. If it could benefit the people, it is a good institution. Pollution problem happens along with the economic development. This is not a only problem for China. In history, Britain, America, Japan and Italy, all of them also have had a severe air pollution problem, and some of them lasts for 50 years. i think the broken of environment might be the sacrifice for the rapid economic development. The most important consequence of air pollution is the threat to people's health. Recently, most of my parents' friend died in cancer (lung caner). It worries me a lot. To eliminate the pollution in China is hard, because we don't want to stop the economic development what could lead to a social chaos. For now, national stability is what the government wants.