No one has a mortgage on morality. But you could be mistaken for thinking otherwise if you've been following the argument over the past few days about whether we should increase the foreign aid budget.
A range of Christian organisations have endorsed Labor's proposal that Australia raise our foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of gross domestic product by 2015, in line with the targets of the Make Poverty History campaign. So far the Coalition has committed to lifting foreign aid spending only to 0.35 per cent of GDP. Unfortunately it seems that this debate has less to do with poverty, and more to do with the struggle of various Christian churches to remain relevant. If this was really a debate about poverty, we'd be talking about what works, not what makes us feel good.
The evidence is irrefutable. Free political institutions, free trade and free markets are the best way to get people out of poverty. The difference between the economic development of Africa and Asia is proof of this. In recent decades, as aid to Africa has increased, living standards have actually declined. Foreign aid is usually only successful on a small scale and often provides marginal benefits. Foreign aid will not be the vehicle to improve the condition of the 3 billion people living on less than $2 a day. As the world's leading expert on the subject, William Easterly, wrote earlier this year: "Poverty will end as it has ended everywhere else, by home-grown political, economic and social reformers and entrepreneurs that unleash the power of democracy and free markets." The Prime Minister was right when in response to Labor's campaign promise he said: "The world, the rich world, can do more to help those starving people of struggling countries by getting rid of corruption in the governments of those countries and also by opening trade barriers ..."
The sincerity of those attempting to overcome poverty is not in doubt. The mystery is why some Christian churches and others insist on foreign aid rather than free markets as the solution. And to this question there are at least three answers. First, the accusation that poverty is the result of insufficient foreign aid serves as a critique of Western consumerism and materialism. The claim is that poverty in poor countries is the product of the failings of citizens of rich countries. This analysis coalesces with a theology of some Christian churches, which is hostile to free enterprise, profit-making and private gain. Many Christians are uncomfortable with the idea that their desire to buy and enjoy the consumer goods made in the factories of China and Vietnam can be as effective in defeating poverty as giving away 10 per cent of their weekly salary.
Second, the attempt to use morality as the justification for an increase in foreign aid means that anti-poverty campaigners can ignore the evidence that foreign aid has failed to deliver what it has promised. Morality trumps everything else. Anyone who maintains that increasing foreign aid is not necessarily the most effective way of combating poverty is regarded either as not acting morally or, worse, as being immoral. Why use facts to win an argument when morality will do the job instead?
In The Age at the weekend, former Young Australian of the Year Hugh Evans wrote in stark terms about foreign aid. "No Australians should have to choose between the life and death of a child. This is a moral issue ..." No one singing at the Make Poverty History concerts was willing to make democracy and free markets a moral issue.
Third, by making foreign aid a debate solely about morality rather than economics or politics, Christian churches are attempting to assume for themselves the exclusive right to make pronouncements on the topic. When church representatives discuss economics or politics they are no better qualified to speak than anyone else. But "morality" is still regarded as the preserve of religion. By focusing exclusively on the moral imperatives of overcoming poverty rather than the real solutions based on economics and politics, the churches can go some way to ensuring their relevance.
Climate change provides another example of the churches' rush to resort to morality. When Cardinal George Pell cautioned against church leaders making extravagant claims about global warming and environmental catastrophe, he was taken to task by Anglican Bishop George Browning. Bishop Browning went so far as to claim that because Jesus spoke about the rich taking what belonged to the poor, therefore "He spoke about climate change". Following Bishop Browning's scriptural exegesis, presumably we are close to finding a biblical injunction for Australia to sign the Kyoto Protocol.
Foreign aid, like climate change, is an area in which morality has overtaken reality. The problem with the tactic of resorting to morality at every opportunity is that when eventually everything is a moral issue, nothing is.
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