Stinginess
We’re just very stingy, I’m afraid. The Sunday Star-Times has an excellent editorial on the amount of overseas development aid New Zealand gives out. It’s worth quoting at length. Notice the similarity between its arguments, and those Keith made in February in support of an aid agency campaign to raise our aid budget to 0.7 percent of GDP:
New Zealand’s aid record has long been a disgrace, and it remains a disgrace under [Phil] Goff’s proudly internationalist government.
[…]
The government can claim that it has increased the aid budget, and so it has - our contribution has gone from “miserable” to “slightly less miserable”. In 2003, for example, it went up by about $20 million. Last year it went up by about $32m, to about $317m.But these are piffling increases, and so is the total sum we give. As a proportion of our total income, we are in the bottom third of the OECD. We are far behind the leaders, the liberal countries of northern Europe. Norway, for instance, gives 0.92 per cent.
[…]
The government has surpluses of many billions, and Michael Cullen’s argument that it is all earmarked will not wash when it comes to international aid. The aid bill is less than 1% of the total tax take. If Cullen wanted to, he could double it on Budget night. But the government clearly doesn’t want to.
[…]
The proportion of economic output devoted to official aid has fallen under Helen Clark’s reign, from 0.25% to its present wretched 0.23% of GNI. In other words, our meanness - as measured by the proportion of our affluence that we are prepared to apportion to the desperate - has deepened. Politicians have clearly made the calculation that foreign aid is an expendable extra that can be cut without undue domestic political trouble.
