Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I met with a delegation of dynamic young men and women from my electorate who were visiting Canberra to promote the Oaktree Foundation's Roadtrip to End Poverty. The road trip is an important initiative. It brings together 1,000 people aged 16 to 26, from every Australian state and territory, to travel around the country holding local community events and to spread the message as to how and why we must end global poverty.

With more than one billion people still living below the poverty line, and infant and child mortality rates still at an unacceptable high, we in Australia have an obligation to help the world's poor. I am proud of Australia's aid program, with our annual contribution now more than $5 billion, helping to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and educating many more. I acknowledge that there is also a bipartisan commitment to increase our aid levels from 0.35 per cent of GNI to 0.5 per cent of GNI.

I congratulate the Oaktree Foundation, Australia's largest youth volunteer organisation, which has over 100,000 members and its head office in my electorate. I look forward to working with Oaktree and its many young leaders like Caitlin Murphy, who has done so much to motivate the team as we work together towards the Millennium Development Goals and ending global poverty.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I met with Claire Angel-Auld, a wonderful ambassador for the Oaktree Foundation Roadtrip to End Poverty, and a number of other wonderful ambassadors. This is their message to this House:

We are one thousand motivated Australians, who each have a story, and who are passionate about ending global poverty in our lifetime.

We are not lawyers, or corporate executives. We don't own mines or the media. We are school students, university students, workers, and social media users. But we have a voice. And we will use our voices to empower our global brothers and sisters who, of no fault of their own, are born in other nations, of extreme poverty.

Our arbitrary birth into a nation of wealth and resources means that our good fortune, future and chances are decided pre-emptively. We must use this fortune, and the knowledge of circumstance to spread our fair share.

We are global citizens, we are humanists, we are realists. Extreme poverty can and will be eradicated in the next 20 years under a 0.7% foreign aid contribution of our GNI. Seventy cents per one hundred dollars ends 99% of the 500,000 maternal deaths each year in developing countries. Seventy cents per one hundred dollars provides 137 million women with access to family planning. Seventy cents per one hundred dollars facilitates aid effective programs to save millions of lives from preventable diseases. Seventy cents per one hundred dollars sends millions of children to school instead of the fields.

0.7% brings 1.4 billion people out of extreme poverty.

Well, may the Oaktree Foundation, Claire Angel-Auld and— (Time expired)