Be Passionate!
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Radio National has a one-hour talk-back program at Noon "Australia Talks Back" and last week they were talking about the possibility of cuts to the government's aid budget.
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Everyone was very reasonable. The arguments were complex and full of aid jargon.
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I got mad. I remembered Pamela Bone's article the previous week in the Melbourne Age.
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She visited a World Vision project sponsored by Australian government money. The kids were eating high-energy biscuits from a box labelled "Gift of the Government of Australia."
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If there are cuts to aid, will there soon be no more biscuits for these kids?
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It is easy to talk about concepts like "aid" and "money". We can discuss the difference between "relief" and "development". We can debate the theology of "mission" and "evangelism".
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At World Vision, we are very good at it.
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But it's not enough.
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People are what really matter. And an "aid cut" can mean people suffer. Real suffering. Actual pain. Life and death stuff.
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It's a measure of the cynical ineffectiveness of much that passes for international governance that so much real hurt and pain can be hidden behind vapid talk and intellectual bumph.
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Let's call a spade a spade. Some aid cuts will mean children die. It's as simple and as awful as that.