Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In the last sitting week I met with Eleanor Scott, Luca Zhao and Jane Robinson, three very impressive and articulate young women—community leaders representing the Oaktree organisation. They came to tell me about their End Poverty Roadtrip experiences in advocacy, meeting ordinary Australians and speaking with them about the challenges faced in eradicating extreme poverty around the world. They spoke to me of the interest and support they had received, in diverse parts of Victoria, on their way to Canberra.

They also came to make clear to me—as they did—that young people in the Scullin electorate are passionately committed to ending extreme poverty. I started the meeting supportive of their concerns and I ended it much more firmly committed.

I note that last week we marked International Anti-Poverty Day. I acknowledge that in the last 20 years extreme poverty has been halved with one billion people lifted out of poverty, but there is so much more to be done. We must contribute our fair share—to date, we are not doing so. I agree with Oaktree that this is not good enough, so I say in this place, as I said to them: firstly, on the eve of the G20 we must do more to combat global corporate tax avoidance and, secondly, we must commit, and I am personally committed, to increasing our foreign aid commitment to 0.5 per cent of GNI by 2020 and 0.7 per cent by 2025. This is in contrast to this government's approach that is seeing the most vulnerable around the world pay the heaviest price for its misguided austerity.