Tue 21 November 2006 - Making poverty history
The streets were closed to traffic, the barricades went up. Yes, the Bentleigh festival was on again.
But 15km away from the sausage sizzles, roaming families, showbags and Humphrey B Bear, some streets in central Melbourne were blocked-off for the third day, for the G20 meeting. Hearing about the violence in Collins Street on Saturday, it seemed like a world away.
I can’t for the life of me understand the motivation of the few dozen protestors who turned violent unless it’s simply to have a go at the police, and generally cause trouble. It seems a long way from the vast majority of people attending who were simply trying to highlight important issues such as environmental destruction and poverty.
Bono was on Lateline on Friday night appealing to the Australian government to give 0.7 percent of GDP to aid for eliminating poverty.
I support that. And even better, I’m going to rejig my regular charity donations to make sure I’m personally donating at least 0.7 percent of my income to charity. By my calculations I’m currently over that (1.008%), though some of it is going to Greenpeace, which doesn’t directly work on poverty issues.
Now, when will my government join in?