Use of Money

Tsunami relief funds have been misdirected. Big shocker, huh?

Three years after Australians donated $400 million to rebuild Asian lives devastated by the 2004 tsunami, aid groups are under attack for spending much of the money on social and political engineering.

A survey by The Australian of the contributions by non-government organisations to the relief effort found the donations had been spent on politically correct projects promoting left-wing Western values over traditional Asian culture.

Well, that certainly sounds like a bunch of leftists have gotten their dirty litt-- But wait; what's this...?

The activities - listed as tsunami relief - include a "travelling Oxfam gender justice show" in Indonesia to change rural male attitudes towards women.

Another Oxfam project, reminiscent of the ACTU's Your Rights at Work campaign, instructs Thai workers in Australian-style industrial activism and encourages them to set up trade unions.

A World Vision tsunami relief project in the Indonesian province of Aceh includes a lobbying campaign to advance land reform to promote gender equity, as well as educating women in "democratic processes" and encouraging them to enter politics.

Critics say the aid agencies have exceeded the mandate provided to them by mum-and-dad donors from middle Australia who thought they were giving money to rebuild houses and lives shattered by the tsunami, rather than forcing the ideological views of the Australian Left on traditional Asians.

If gender equality and workers' rights -- two of the central tenets of a wealth-creating society -- qualify as "ideological views of the left," then I guess I must be a raging hippie. Just go ahead and tase me.

In point of fact, we need to do more of this, not less of it. Simply giving them money to rebuild their homes while leaving an exploitative, stagnanted, medieval culture in place is very much a case of giving a man a fish instead of teaching him how to fish.

If people want money they don't have -- Western money -- to rebuild their country after a devastating event, I say we give it to them, but not unconditionally. I will happily help to build you a new home, but I will be damned if I'm going to build a harem room and a whipping post in it. Justice may be blind; charity is not.

Just because something is "traditional" does not automatically mean it's acceptable behavior. An effective method for helping them understand that "traditions" of misogyny and exploitation constitute unacceptable behavior is by attaching conditions to our assistance. That's not leftism; that's common sense.