Yesterday the prime meanster pulled one of the meanest & shallowest stunts of his career.

Our little johnnie proudly announced that Australia intended to increase its overseas aid allocation to about A$4 billion a year by 2010. Such an increase would represent a doubling of Australia's overseas aid from 2004 levels.

Australia’s foreign aid in 2004 amounted to 0.18% of GDP & with the great benefactor’s latest generous announcement will effectively double our contributions to around 0.36% - if the commitment is met.

Jim Dowling is a care worker.

 
He is a very gentle man, committed to social action.

 
He was violently arrested at a debate at QUT last week. (The debate was ostensibly about civil liberties.)

 
This is his description of his experience.

‘The US has a long-standing (and accelerating) policy of arming, training and aiding some of the world's most repressive regimes. As insecurity mounts from Najaf to New Orleans, more weapons and high-tech military equipment are flowing into some of the globe's most vulnerable and war-torn regions.  

The Congressional Research Service recently found that global arms sales rose to US$37 billion in 2004 - the highest level since 2000. US companies such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing rang up $12.4 billion in weapons contracts - more than one-third of the total and more than twice what Russia - the second largest exporter sold. The Departments of State, Commerce and Defense are all involved in different aspects of approving licenses, managing logistics and (in many cases) loaning or granting funds to nations as they seek weapons from US corporations.  

The time was five years ago, to be exact, and in these memoirs, titled "A World Transformed," the former President, George Herbert Walker Bush, father of George W. Bush, wrote the following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the gulf War:

"Trying to eliminate Saddam ... would have incurred incalculable human & political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad & in effect, rule Iraq ...

The Australian Prime Minister Mr Howard will unveil plans to increase aid to $4 billion a year by 2012 from the current level of $2.7 billion.

The increase will take Australia close to the 0.7 per cent of GDP set at the Millennium Summit five years ago.

Source: Melbourne Herald Sun 

The main Australian aid provider would possibly  be the company in the
process of settling a new foreign aid administrator into its Adelaide
office.

Aid  contracts have been given to Halliburton KBR in Adelaide over the last three years under the pretext that they were being given to a local company.   But the way, the minister's contact in that  media  release is now a senior journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser.  He is also a former conservative member of Parliament, and led the newspaper's campaign to invoke support for the Adelaide Warship Contract