Tag: global responsibility

Sri Lanka Shows The Gap Between Spending And Reality

These tanks sit at my hotel. Treated water. Ten thousand litres at a time. I can turn on a tap and trust what comes out. Safe drinking water should not depend on where you sleep. Everyone in Sri Lanka deserves it.

I came here as a tourist on a cultural journey. Everyone told me how beautiful the country is and how wonderful the people are. That’s what I expected.

I wasn’t expecting to finish each day reflecting.

Reflecting on the gap between what I have and what people here manage without. Reflecting on how normal clean water, reliable health care and basic infrastructure feel at home, and how visible their absence is here.

Reflecting on how quickly you understand why vaccines sit at the centre of daily life. Reflecting on how easily illness can become something serious when the basics aren’t in place.

Reflecting on why people leave.

And then reflecting on something else. What this says about us, about the choices we make at home, and where we spend our money. The gap between what we know and what we are prepared to act on.

We are not standing on the sidelines. Australia is already spending money in places like this. Bill sent me some background that shifted the question for me. Bill is someone I trust on these issues. He has worked in the sector, served on the board of World Education Australia and Good Return, and is widely respected by those around him for his steady commitment to social and environmental justice.

He reminded me that there is already a serious structure behind Australia’s aid and development work. The Australian Council for International Development is the peak body for Australian NGOs involved in international development and humanitarian action. Its membership includes more than 130 organisations working across more than 90 developing countries. Large agencies, smaller community based groups, secular and faith based organisations, all part of the same system.

This is not a loose collection of good intentions. There are standards, reporting, accountability. There are people who have spent years trying to make this work.

So the question changes.

It is no longer enough to say Australia should spend more upstream and less at the punitive end. We are already spending upstream.

So why does it still look like this?

Bill’s advice was simple. Ask people.

I won’t have the chance to do that on this trip in any meaningful way. So I am drawing on what people in this space have already heard when those conversations do happen.

The answers are not complicated. People want the basics to work.

Clean water you can trust. Waste systems that don’t sit in the open. Health care that is close, reliable and affordable. Jobs that provide steady income. Transport that gets you to work safely. Schools that lead somewhere real.

They want consistency. Not programs that arrive, run for a while, then disappear. Not pilots that look good in reports and never scale.

They want work more than workshops. Income more than messaging.

They want to see where the money goes. They know aid exists. They also know it does not always reach them. That creates scepticism.

And they want to be asked at the beginning, not at the end.

None of this is surprising.

What is confronting is how closely it lines up with what I am seeing.

I thought the story was simple. We spend too much on borders and not enough on the causes.

Now I can see a more nuanced version of the story.

We are already part of this. Money is already flowing. The question is whether it is reaching the right places, whether it reflects what people actually need, and whether we stay long enough to see change last.

That is what I am reflecting on now.

Not only what I am seeing, though what sits behind it. Who decides. Who benefits. Who gets heard.

None of this is an argument for blank cheques, donor vanity projects or money that never reaches the people living with the consequences. It is an argument for asking harder questions about what works, what lasts and who gets to decide.

The next step is obvious.

Ask better questions.

Then listen.

Australia Funds the Warning Signs and Ignores the Problem

I came on a holiday and now I am putting together a briefing note to get an audience with Penny Wong.

Six days in Sri Lanka and it has become impossible to dodge that Australia spends billions on detention centres, offshore processing, border enforcement and surveillance, locking up children and stripping people of hope, and far less on the conditions that drive people to leave.

Billions on Warnings, Almost Nothing on Solutions

In my first piece I wrote about vaccines, public health and the visible conditions that make disease prevention a daily issue, not a travel checklist.

This second piece comes from a different place. I have taken a day out and stayed at the hotel because I needed a break from what I am seeing. The contrast is confronting. Writing this is how I turn that into action.

I am drawing on the leadership training I trust. Goal, problem, solution. In an ideal world we would sit down with the people we want to support and listen, and listen, and listen.

We pour money into deterrence after people decide to go, when the wiser investment is supporting them to stay

You do not need a policy paper to understand the pull of Australia from here. You need eyes and a nose. You need to walk past polluted water, rubbish piled where people live and work, and the kind of infrastructure gap that turns an ordinary stomach bug into something far more serious. You need to hear that Australia funds bus shelters carrying warnings about people smugglers and recognise the absurdity in full view.

We will pay for the warning sign. We drag our feet on the conditions that might remove the need for the warning.

And of course people look at Australia and want what we have. Clean water. Reliable health care. Schools that open doors. Work that pays enough to build a life. Streets that do not force public health into every hour of the day. Add a strong Sri Lankan community already living in Australia and the path becomes easier to imagine. People are not chasing fantasy. They are responding to the visible difference between one set of conditions and another.

Now place that against our politics at home. We live in a country of abundance, still right wing politics thrives by feeding grievance. Migrants are taking our jobs. Migrants are buying our houses. Migrants are the problem. It is the old script. Find a villain. Feed the resentment. Keep the public focused on who to blame rather than what to fix.

This is where the debate in Australia becomes so shabby. We hand the microphone to people who reduce human desperation to border slogans, as though cruelty counts as policy. They rage about boats, numbers and national strength. They rarely talk about sanitation, disease prevention, local health care, waste systems, corruption proof delivery, or long term partnerships with communities. They talk about the last stage of the story because outrage plays well at home.

There is another audience for this conversation. People who already know Australia has obligations beyond self protection. People who understand that generosity without discipline achieves little, and discipline without humanity turns ugly fast. This is where the hard thinking belongs. How do we help build safer, healthier lives in countries people are leaving? How do we do it from the ground up, with local knowledge, clear goals, open reporting and constant scrutiny? How do we keep money out of corrupt hands and get it to the people and projects that can change daily life?

We Warn Them Not to Come, Then Do Nothing About Why They Leave

None of this is beyond us. Trial programs. Local partnerships. Transparent metrics. Public reporting. Long term commitment. Real listening before money moves. Australia knows how to design systems, monitor spending and explain outcomes when it chooses to. This is a choice.

Sri Lanka has made one part of this brutally clear to me. People do not hand over life savings to smugglers because they are reckless. They do it because paradise looks believable from where they stand, and because home has stopped offering enough protection, dignity or hope.

That should force a different question onto the table in Australia. Not how loudly we can declare the border secure. How seriously we are prepared to invest in the basics that give people a reason to stay where they are.

I came here for a holiday. Six days in, I am thinking about budgets, public health, political courage and the poverty of a national debate that still treats deterrence as the main event.

This is the second piece. I will come back to the question in another six days, and I doubt it will have become any easier.