by Kennedy Graham
Last year Foreign Minister Murray McCully decided to roll stand-alone governmental aid agency NZAID back into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. This move met with vigorous opposition from Labour and the Greens.
Many of the NGOs in New Zealand such as Caritas and Oxfam were also opposed to Mr McCully’s plans.
Now the New Zealand Council for International development – which is an umbrella group for aid groups operating from New Zealand, has received a cut to its funding.
Many of the NGOs that had been critical of Mr McCully’s plans for NZAID and his desire to move NZAID funding away from poverty alleviation to economic development belong to NZCID.
Mr McCully this week attacked what he called the aid bureaucracy in New Zealand – presumably as a justification for cuts to NZCID ‘s funding.
Nowhere has there been any analysis from the Minister about the work NZCID does or how the funding cut-back will affect the work of the aid organisations that belong to NZCID.
While the Minister has been trumpeting how the Government’s is saving money by cutting funding to those working in New Zealand to make the world a better place – it has emerged that MFAT under his reign has been keeping needy workers of Brussels in fine style.
The struggling cold air vendors of Riyadh have also felt the largesse of the New Zealand Government to the tune of $459,000.
Mr McCully’s desire to alleviate poverty and practise sustainable economics has also resulted in the Tongan pool building industry going from strength to strength.
MFAT’s spending on Rolls-Royce upgrades shows the Foreign Minister’s desire to prune NZCID’s budget is motivated more by political reasons than any desire to alleviate poverty overseas and in my view that shows a poverty of imagination.
Published in Featured | Justice & Democracy by Kennedy Graham on Fri, June 11th, 2010
Tags: Brussels Embassy, McCully, NZAid, NZCID, Oxfam
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Maybe it’s a warning to community groups invited to the welfare reform forum …
A nation’s committment to the international community and to its own is generally consistent.
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Eh? Why does being motivated by ‘political reasons’ demonstrate a “poverty of the imagination”? Isn’t the Green party motivated by ‘political reasons’? I would have hoped so.
McCully may well suffer a poverty of spirit and the foreign ministry may well suffer a poverty of the imagination, but these cuts are based on a clear ideological programme. One that has never been a secret. So why confuse the issue with such vague terminology?
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And even more revelations of this government’s complete lack of compassion for those that need support:
Recent comments made to the Welfare Working Group (WPG) by Dr Monika Queisser-”… 15 per cent of Kiwi children lived in families with less than half the median income, compared with an OECD average of 12 per cent. “The gap between material deprivation of children and older people is biggest in New Zealand out of 27 countries…”
Taken from:http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/06/11/g-campbell-ministerial-spending-child-poverty/#more-804
Perhaps the reason for the bias towards our elderly (they are the best supported in the OECD) is because they can vote and children can’t?
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