Bono Reckons Tony Abbott’s Inaction On Ebola And Foreign Aid Isn’t Very “Australian”

Last night Channel Nine’s Sixty Minutes screened an interview with porridge-rock icons and secret tenants in your iTunes library U2, and didn’t they just look stoked to be there.

 

Because talking about U2’s new music would take up like forty seconds of airtime, max, the interview quickly turned to Bono’s social activism which he’s very humble about definitely. Mr. No (how does one address Bono in the proper form? Mr. Bono? BoNo? Why doesn’t he have a name) had some pretty strong words for Tony Abbott on the government’s decision to not send aid workers to help fight Ebola for, like, no reason.

“The idea that you wouldn’t send medical workers to west Africa, this is just not the Australia I know”, Bono said. “To think that Australia’s far away and you can protect yourself by protecting the airports and docks is not smart; you have to protect it at the source of the problem. These diseases do not respect borders.”

He’s right, incidentally; the Australian Medical Association is pretty angry at the government’s response to the west Africa Ebola crisis, which up until now has consisted largely of covering their eyes and humming ‘God Save The Queen’ really loudly. The US, the UK, Liberia and Sierra Leone, all of whom have quite a bit of skin in this game, have quite reasonably asked Australia to pull its finger out of its arse and lend a hand, but so far there’s been no response.

Bono also pointed out that the government’s $7.6 billion cuts to the foreign aid budget are pretty messed up, saying that cuts of that magnitude equal “a lot of lives” and that they don’t “strike me as being very Australian”.

He’s uncomfortably right about that one, too; the recent foreign aid cuts make up around twenty percent of the government’s budget savings, despite our existing aid contributions only being about 1.3 percent of the budget as a whole. We currently spend about 0.3 percent of our gross national income on foreign aid, despite a deal reached in 2007 where both major parties agreed to raise the contribution to 0.7 percent by 2015, and will probably only contribute about 0.29 percent by 2017-18.

Foreign aid, for those playing at home, often goes towards preventing the spread of diseases in developing countries, which could really come in handy in west Africa right about now. You know something’s pretty messed up when Bono is the least heinous element of whatever it is you’re talking about.

–

H/t Daily Mail.