Tsunami Aid Spent on PC Causes

I certainly cannot say I'm surprised to find out that money donated to aid the victims of the tsunami three years ago wound up being used to promote left-wing, feel good nonsense.

Liberals just can't help themselves. Using other people's money to promote their agenda just comes naturally to them.

They've been doing it for so long, they don't even understand how reprehensible it is.

THREE years after Australians donated $400 million to rebuild Asian lives devastated by the 2004 tsunami, aid groups are under attack for spending much of the money on social and political engineering.

A survey by The Australian of the contributions by non-government organisations to the relief effort found the donations had been spent on politically correct projects promoting left-wing Western values over traditional Asian culture.

The activities - listed as tsunami relief - include a "travelling Oxfam gender justice show" in Indonesia to change rural male attitudes towards women.

Another Oxfam project, reminiscent of the ACTU's Your Rights at Work campaign, instructs Thai workers in Australian-style industrial activism and encourages them to set up trade unions.

A World Vision tsunami relief project in the Indonesian province of Aceh includes a lobbying campaign to advance land reform to promote gender equity, as well as educating women in "democratic processes" and encouraging them to enter politics.

Also in Aceh, the Catholic aid group Caritas funds an Islamic learning centre to promote "the importance of the Koran". This is seen as recognition of the importance of Islam in a province that has been the scene of a long-running and bloody independence struggle against the secular central Government.

The earthquake on December 26, 2004, created the most powerful tsunami in 40 years, killing about 230,000 people in 12 Indian Ocean nations, just under half of them in Aceh.

Critics say the aid agencies have exceeded the mandate provided to them by mum-and-dad donors from middle Australia who thought they were giving money to rebuild houses and lives shattered by the tsunami, rather than forcing the ideological views of the Australian Left on traditional Asians.

While I certainly have no qualms with efforts to promote women's rights, let these organizations do that with money raised separately if they so choose

Helping victims of this calamity should be the only job, not promoting trendy left-wing causes.