Canada – Missionaries, Mercenaries and Misfits

Last night Australians demonstrated their good sense, groundedness and well-honed pique in a big way. They voted for an imminently moderate, Elmer Fudd-like, Labor party lifer, someone who I (like almost all Aussies, except Labor party lifers) thought would probably lose the election or be so constrained by the political forces around him and his party that he/we would limp through another 3 years of soothing talk but precious little action on things we all care about: climate action, costs of life and health care.

His opposite number, the bald pated ex-Queensland cop (for non Australians, that is like being an ex-LAPD cop) not only the lost the election but also was given a tight kick in the pants by his own constituents. His career was yanked out from under him and there will be few tears shed.

I watched Albo’s acceptance speech. This guy has turned from Elmer Fudd into Conan the Barbarian! He spoke like he has rarely done. Confident, strong-voiced (yes he still has a high, slightly silly voice) and full of grace, goodwill and kindness. He didn’t bag the Liberals or his counterpart. He spoke of doing things the ‘Australian way’, with decency and kindness and caring for those doing it tough.

It’s easy to get cynical about politics and I’m a deep cynic. But I felt my chest swelling (for once outdoing my belly) as he spoke. I especially felt glad and proud to be Australian for one of the first times since I became a citizen. I am so grateful to be living in a country that despite being full of larrikins, (Crocodile) Dundees and (Breaker) Morants and which can be pretty crude from time to time, is indeed a country in which decency is deeply felt and practiced across all layers of society.

Pundits predicted a minority government for Labor. Once again, they got it wrong. Not only did Labor win a thumping majority, on track to have more than twice the number of seats of the Libs, but have won the largest number of primary votes (sort of like the popular vote in the USA) ever by a Labor government since WWII. And that includes those of Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Kevin Rudd!

The Liberals have experienced a plane crash in which most of their leaders (a pretty low standard I admit) are gone and their brightest rising stars have all been killed. They have almost no (zero, zip) representation in the major urban centres of the country where most Aussies live. They’ve lost young people, women and the sane.

The Liberal/National Party are now even more adrift than the American Republicans. At least the spineless yesmen of the GOP are united in blindly marching over the cliff. Where they stand is clear…behind Trump with their noses and tongues on his arse. Their Australian wanna-be’s have no idea of what they want, should want and most of all have spent nearly two decades stubbornly ignoring what their own constituents want. Good luck to the grubs.

The Australian Labor Party has delivered every major social and economic reform that makes us a modern serious country. It began with Whitlam 50 years ago and continued through Julia Gillard. The Liberal grubs have done nothing but undermine, block and seek to take a torch to all of these reforms all the while espousing pioneering ideas on how to mistreat asylum seekers (El Salvador and Trump have lifted the overseas gulag idea from the Liberals), demonstrated their luddite attitude toward technology while all the time bashing the oldest human culture, Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples, at every turn.

Like the Republicans in Washington they’ve become more extreme and stupid with every election. They can be formidable in opposition but perfectly inept and corrupt when every they get near the cookie jar. Their analysis of their own coalition and approach was summarised by a senior Liberal senator last night as a ‘knife fight’.

Corruption, fear mongering. A party of drunks and women haters the LNP is out of touch with Australians on every single issue. So confused were they this time they actually took a policy of ‘tax increases’ to the election.

We did the needful, Australia. We wiped them off the mat, save for a few skid marks.

Suddenly, we are in a new era of gradual change but decency in public life. That sounds like a winner to me.

Trump was a definite factor in the final tally. Dutton praised Trump’s ‘big thinking’ and announced a cut of 40,000 bureaucrats which went down like a loud fart in church. One of the Party’s attack dogs, a young Aboriginal woman, who goes about with 3 or four bouncer types pinned in close, swore to Make Australia Great Again and proudly sported the ubiquitous red cap.

In the words of a former Liberal Prime Minister, a man who was politically assassinated by Peter Dutton in one of their Party’s famous ‘knife fights’, Trump was the mood music in the background to the election. Very clearly Australians don’t dig that sort of music. Another reason to be proud today. Trump was not THE factor as in Canada. The LNP just got whupped everywhere on every issue. Refer to my comments on ineptitude above.

So, today is a bright sunny day. Literally and politically. This has been a victory for consistent trimming of the “system” in favour of the non-millionaire class, calm and considered responses to the devils Trumpism has released. Australians chose not to go with radical ambition or goofy ideas but rather voted for the dull, the gradual and the diligence of the Labor Party lifers.

Huzzah!

The decision by Trump/Musk to do away with USAID should be a development we are not surprised by. But I am. It does not bode well for millions of people and communities around the world whose American tax-payer-funded assistance will cease. But its certainly, a huge nail in the nearly completed coffin of the aid sector as we know it.

The move to disappear stand-alone aid agencies is not new. Canada did it. Boris Johnson did it. And it happened here in Australia in 2013 when a pugnacious let’s-move-back- to-the-past Prime Minister mandated the death of AusAID.

Everywhere it has happened it has had a similar effect. The quantum and impact of the ‘aid’ decreases dramatically. Experts with decades of experience and knowledge are turfed out and replaced by graduates and bland bureaucrats with no interest in the subject matter. When Australia did its downsizing over a decade ago, the budget for international aid had been growing steadily and significantly every few years. Both parties, pledged to make Australia a good global citizen and set a target of .7 GNI (gross national income) to be the annual goal. This would have taken Australia from a medium sized supporter of community development and humanitarian response to the major leagues.

When Tony Blair became Prime Minister of Britain in 1997, he removed the ’Aid’ office from the Foreign Office and created a separate and well-funded agency which dominated the sector for the next 15 years. DFID, as it was known (Department for International Development) was very well funded, filled with recognised technical experts and championed new ideas. It was the thought leader of the global sector, respected by all for its commitment to addressing some of the inherent problems that exist in such an agency.

USAID was the Daddy Warbucks of the industry. The agency with the deepest pockets, largest infrastructure and a pioneer in the financing of major infrastructure projects like dams and roads that were critical for countries to building their sense of nationhood and post-colonial economies. It had its political constraints imposed by Republicans (no support to abortion or reproductive services, for example) but it was so big these things got lost in the shuffle.

As a kid in India, one of the regular features on the landscape were American men sporting crewcuts and white shirts running around in the most remote places laying the groundwork for or directing the building of such projects. I attended school with several kids whose parents were in India or Bangladesh or Burma or Ceylon for a few years, working for USAID or the Canadian aid agency on these massive projects.

It seems those days are now gone forever. I lament not the white men and crewcuts or even the massive projects, but that governments no longer consider soft power and aid to be something of value. And the implicit if unspoken belief that poverty can be defeated. And that the ‘West’ has a degree of responsibility for taking steps to reduce that poverty and vulnerability.

DFID is no more. BJ smooshed it back into the Foreign Office and its budget was stripped to support other brilliant schemes like sending asylum seekers to imaginary camps in Rwanda. And to support other underfunded Tory projects. Where if once was a beacon, Britain’s aid program, like so much else in the UK, is flickering candle in a rainstorm. Canada means well but has lost its importance as an aid donor.

Australia, flying high with billions of dollars and ambitious plans to support climate change around the world, is now a sick, in-house joke. Rather than .7% of GNI, the aid budget represents .19% GNI! The lowest level since the 1950s! It’s important presence in South Asia, Africa, and SE Asia has disappeared. It’s only significant programs are in Papua New Guinea (former colony) and a few other Pacific Island nations. Its priority is pro-business and infrastructure. Issues like public health, agricultural support, education support or humanitarian response is as thin as the storyline the politicos spin in front of the cameras.

For well over a decade now, Interntional non-governmental organisations (INGOS) have been struggling to find a reason to stay alive. This is a long and inglorious story of strategic blindness, consolidation and refusal to face the reality of a changing world. In this way, perhaps Trump’s bull-in-a-China shop approach will finally bring on the crisis that will at last bring reality crashing through the cubicle partitions. That could be good. But the damage will be massive and the chances of it leading to anything but chaos and corruption, extremely low.

More likely what we will see is the aid budget going to support Trusk designed projects (Trump hotels in Myanmar, rocket ships for Kazakstan, oil drilling in South Sudan, shopping malls and data farms in Greenland). And huge disruption to the financial viability of INGOs around the world that have built themselves into large often-bloated institutions whose main source of revenue is USAID. Which is now shuttered.

I just tapped in “USAID.gov”

Stay tuned for further developments on this front.

Tag: Canada

Real Politics beats Anger-tainment

The final nail? Trusk do away with USAID