Year 10: Military - US/Australia Alliance

1. Who is Steven Smith and what important role does he play for the Australian Government? Steven Smith is defence minister of Australia.
2. What is the Brookings Institution where Mr. Smith delivered his speech? The brooking instituion is in Washington in the US.
3. What role does the Australia/US Alliance play in Australia's 'strategic and security arrangements'? For almost 50 years, through the joint defence facilities in Australia, we have made a significant contribution to US national security by hosting or supporting some of the US's most sensitive and critical strategic capabilities
4. What is important about Australia's global location for this alliance? Australia's global location can assist the US by monitoring near by countries such as China, Indonesia. Australia
5. What contributions has Australia made to this alliance for the last 50 years? Australia has made a significant contribution through joint defence facilities aswell as hosting some of the US's mostsensitive and critical strategic capabilities.
6. What did the minister say about the Australian companies who do business with the US? Australia is an ally that adds value. We are not a consumer of US security who imposes tough choices on the US military and US public policy.
7. Why does the minister point out this information about this company? What does it highlight about the relationship between Australia and the US? It highlights that we value-add, and we do so from a vantage point of respect, not dependency
8. What is the country central to Australia's relationships in the region? China is the country central to Australia's relationships in the region.  
9. What is Australia trying to foster with this country? Australia wants, as the Chinese would say, China to emerge into a 'harmonious environment'
10. Why do you think that this is important to Australia? This is because China is one of the super powers of the world and if Australia has them as an allie they can almost guarantee there safety.

Year 10: Immigration

1. An asylum seeker is a person who has fled their own country and applies to the government of another country for protection as a refugee. According to the United Nations Convention and Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (the Refugee Convention), a refugee is a person who is outside their own country and is unable or unwilling to return due to a well-founded fear of being persecuted.

2. They are generally in fear of being persecuted because of their:

• race
• religion
• nationality
• membership of a particular social group
• political opinion.

3. Humanitarian Program, aims to:

• assist people in humanitarian need overseas for whom resettlement in another country is the only available option; and
• comply with Australia's international obligations onshore under the Refugee Convention.

The program has two main parts: off-shore resettlement and on-shore protection.

4. There are about 9.7 million refugees around the world. Asia hosts more than one third of the world's refugees (3.6 million), followed by Africa (3.1 million), Europe (2.2 million) and North America (0.58 million).

Questions:

1. What is the deal between Australia and Malaysia? (What are the numbers of people being 'swapped'?) Send 800 asylum seakers in exchange for 4000 refugees
2. What rights will they have in Malaysia which will allow them to support themselves? The deal states they will be treated with rights and respect, under normal human rights.
3. How does Malaysia normally treat illegal immigrants? They normally treat illegal immigrants terribly by sending them to special "holding" centres if they are found working in illegal factories.
4. Are children being sent to Malaysia? Children will be sent but will be entitled to education and basic human rights
5. What is going to happen to the processing of the 500+ people currently in Australia who have arrived from the 7th of May? Will now be processed in Australia. They will have their claims processed in Australia.
6. What do refugee advocates worry about for the 800 asylum seekers? They are put in harms way in the future, which can't be ruled out.
7. What is the goal of this 'swap' program? The goal of this swap program is to rid Australia of any illegal immigrants(asylum seakers) and to bring in legitimate refugees who deserve a better lifestyle.
8. Do you think that it will work? Why/why not? I dont feel it will work because if Mrs Gillard can't control and guarantee safety of her own people in Malaysia how can she guarantee the safety of 800 asylum seekers.

Year 10: Monday 25/7 Period 4

1. What title does Kevin Rudd have in the Australian Government? Explain what this role entails. Kevin Rudds title is foreign minister which means he deals with foreign affairs and international treaty organisations such as ASEAN.
2. What is Kevin Rudd's concern? Mr Rudd told Mr Pak it was “unacceptable” for North Korea to blame on others the security problems it had caused for the whole region, having recently torpedoed a South Korean naval frigate, shelled civilians’ homes across the border  and defied two UN Security Council resolutions by pursuing an enriched uranium weapons program.
3. What forum was he at to express his concerns? Kevin Rudd was at the ASEAN Regional Forum blaming the US, South Korea and Japan for  provoking the current dangerous instability on the Korean Peninsula.
4. What actions have North Korea performed recently which have Rudd alarmed and the region lacking stability? Rudd was alarmed at North Korea having recently torpedoed a South Korean naval frigate, shelled civilians’ homes across the border  and defied two UN Security Council resolutions by pursuing an enriched uranium weapons program.
5. What is a 'direct threat' to Australia according to Rudd? Kevin Rudd was refering to the long range missile "Taepodong-2" Which could fire a distance of over 15,000 km, a direct threat to Northern Australia.
6. What do you think that Rudd is trying to accomplish diplomatically by calling out his North Korean counterpart publicly? How does this relate to Australia's relationship and role in the region? 
7. How does this relate to Australia's relationship to major allies?

Year 10: Australian Aid

Year 10: Australian Aid - Article Summary

• In the past five years Australia's overseas aid budget has doubled. In the next five years it will double again. By 2015 we will be spending $8 billion a year on helping people overseas. All sides of politics support this, and many other rich countries are doing the same. But no one explains why it is happening. There is an uneasy sense that we might all be deluding ourselves.
• So it seemed like a good idea when, late last year, Kevin Rudd announced a review of Australia's overseas aid program by an impressive panel of experts. Rudd recently released their report, and his response. The report is full of good sense about how to allocate and administer all the extra money. But neither the panel's report nor the government's response provides a really convincing answer to the bigger underlying questions about the purpose of our aid program and the reason it's growing so fast.

• Perhaps they think the answer is obvious. Helping people in need is a good thing to do, and there are always more people who need help. But spending money in ways that makes no difference doesn't help anyone, and there is no virtue in aid that makes donors feel good but doesn't help the needy.

 

• Of course some aid really does help. Most obviously, emergency relief after disasters such as Indonesia's tsunami can save thousands. But this accounts for only 7 per cent of today's program.
• The vast bulk of our aid is supposed to help overcome long-term poverty. It is certainly a big problem; a billion people still live on less than $1.25 a day. But there are two things about poverty we need to understand.
• First, poverty is being overcome. In 1981, 54 per cent of the world's people lived in extreme poverty. By 2005 this had fallen to 25 per cent. In 2015 it will be less than 15 per cent, according to the World Bank.
• Second, it's not being beaten by aid, but by economic growth. Many of the world's most populous nations, left behind two centuries ago by the industrial revolution, are finally catching up. What we used to call ''the developing world'' has in the past few years overtaken ''the developed world'' in economic output. In China, economic growth has lifted half a billion people out of poverty since 1990.
• There is a strange alchemy to economic growth. It requires a remarkable confluence of factors - social, political and technological - to start whole populations moving from semi-subsistence farming to paid work. For decades, well-meaning Westerners have been trying to find out how to catalyse this process in poor countries. Different theories of development have driven successive fashions in aid, each new panacea discredited in its turn. Meanwhile, trillions of dollars and decades of devoted effort have done little.
• Now, as we watch some of the word's poorest countries start to grow of their own accord, we can see more clearly that aid in any form (capital, technology, roads, schools, armies of technical advisers) does not make much difference. The alchemy of growth depends above all on social and political circumstances and institutions. What works in any particular place or time depends on myriad local factors. It has to be home-grown, not engineered from outside.
• To see this we only need to look across Torres Strait. For almost 40 years, Australia's aid program to PNG has been one of the world's largest and most innovative, and yet PNG is no closer to sustainable economic growth or better living standards today than it was at independence in 1975.
• So why, now that so many of the word's largest and poorest countries have found their own ways to grow out of poverty, are countries like Australia redoubling their aid programs? Of course the shrewd ones say that aid is not really about helping other people at all, but about serving Australia's national interests. Both the review panel (rather coyly), and the government (more blatantly) acknowledge there is more to aid than altruism. No prizes for guessing that more aid to Africa and the Caribbean is all about our UN Security Council bid, or that the big program in Afghanistan is aimed primarily at impressing Washington.
• But such flagrant cases aside, there is a lot of fuzzy thinking about how aid really does serve Australia's interests. Take the government's flagship project - building thousands of schools in Indonesia. It started under Howard as a way to combat terrorism by countering Islamic radicalism in Indonesia's education system. But Indonesia found its own way to do that, and it is anyway doubtful that building the schools gives us much influence over what is taught in them.
• Advocates will answer that the program is a good idea anyway. More schools are vital to Indonesia's economic growth. That is certainly true, but Indonesians don't need us to tell them that. They would be building schools anyway. Our money simply displaces theirs, which they then spend on something else - something less important.
• But we like this kind of project because Australians are wedded to an image of Indonesia as a country too poor to help itself. Think again. Indonesia is richer than Australia. Measured in purchasing power parity terms, which avoids exchange rate distortions and gives the truest index of relative economic weight, Indonesia's GDP is now significantly larger than ours. If we really cared about other people's poverty, we should be celebrating this, but instead we ignore it.
• Indeed the rich West as a whole is in deep denial about the way the world is changing as wealth and power flows away from us to the developing world. And I wonder whether this is not, deep down, why we are all suddenly scrambling to give more aid? Any act of charity is, among other things, an assertion of power. Perhaps as power slips away, we feel more need to assert it.

Question 2
The author of this article obviously believes that the majority of our money spent in overseas aid is a waste. Although he acknowledges that there are parts of our aid program that are very beneficial to our overseas friends, he uses the examples of minimising poverty and emergency aid. He then progresses his arguement to say that this accounts for less than 10 percent of our program now. He explains that the bulk of our overseas aids funds are used to help reduce poverty by specifically building schools etc. He then further develops his point by saing that these countries would already be thinking about this, so the money we give them is a waste. He believes that they are already thinking about making schools, which means the money we "waste" on them will be spent on less important things. He then concludes that Australia should be more assertive in regards to this issue.

Question 3

So why, now that so many of the word's largest and poorest countries have found their own ways to grow out of poverty, are countries like Australia redoubling their aid programs? Of course the shrewd ones say that aid is not really about helping other people at all, but about serving Australia's national interests. Both the review panel (rather coyly), and the government (more blatantly) acknowledge there is more to aid than altruism. No prizes for guessing that more aid to Africa and the Caribbean is all about our UN Security Council bid, or that the big program in Afghanistan is aimed primarily at impressing Washington.