Our aid addresses extreme global poverty – poverty that kills people every day.

For example, about 15,000 children die daily from nothing more than a lack of wholesome food and clean water. The good news is that this number is falling quite dramatically. The global community is addressing global poverty.

Australia should pay its fair share in the global community. Currently, we are one of the least generous of the OECD nations. Our aid levels have now dropped to historic lows. We are now the least generous generation of Australians, when it comes to our aid budget.

Currently Australian aid is about 0.22 per cent of Gross Domestic Income. By comparison, Britain is currently above 0.7 per cent GNI.

Contrary to rumours, repeated external audits have shown that Australian aid is highly efficient and effective, and especially when it is delivered by reputable NGOs. Generous Australian aid is in Australia’s self-interest. Being a reputable international player increases our voice and influence.

Almost all of Australia’s aid is spent in the south Pacific, making our immediate region more stable and secure. With the rise of China, Australia wants to maintain its influence in our region.

LABOR Leader Bill Shorten has put great emphasis on our children's education - it might be a genuine concern and not popularism, that familiar long bow of the Australian Labor Party - but with typical political short-sightedness he has failed to grasp the other side of this very important social equation as he attacks the business incentives in the budget.

The tax incentives offered by the Coalition are designed to help business owners to expand their businesses and thus be able to offer our better educated children employment.

Perhaps Mr Shorten and his colleagues ought to ask themselves what use a long queue of very well educated applicants would be if there were no jobs on offer.

The other point is of course, the present queue of the unemployed in whatever state of educational excellence. Educating children takes time. It is just possible that the proposed tax concessions might solve some of the existing problem with some immediate resolution.

I AM becoming increasingly irritated and I expect not on my lonesome with the total arrogance and don’t-care attitude of commercial television stations toward its viewers.

The only time which is of no consequence to them is the viewers’ time, our time.

I understand that people are turning to other methods of accessing the shows they like and avoiding TV in droves. I’ve had enough of late programs and changed programs with no explanation or apology because we the viewers are unimportant except as regards to the all important ratings.

We need to demand some respect if any changes are to occur. By all means complain, but not to the TV stations, speak to the advertisers whose advertising dollars are aimed at us, the viewers.

Explain why you will no longer be seeing their very expensive ads, which they put up in front of us.

I HAVE attended the Hobart conference on global ocean acidification and also completed open university courses on marine and arctic science and the one on climate change and can honestly say that the gap between what is known and what is the political and public discourse is frightening.

If Australia as the third richest nation still can't fix it's housing affordability and health and education inequities, why think that just more economic growth will change things?

We should do things more intelligently. Wanting non-stop growth is very destructive and has the bizarre implication that no matter what and how much one has, it is insufficient while it really makes people act like cell of cancer.

IN THIS media-dominated age, it can be difficult to see past the image of a political leader, to the true motivations of the party they represent.

Consider Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull: Mr Moderate, socially progressive, innovative, fair-minded and concerned about climate change.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that the leader of a party embodies the values and ambitions of that party, but with Mr Turnbull, what you see is not what you get.

It is increasingly obvious that ultra-conservatives like Cory Bernadi and Tony Abbott (still) call the tune to which Mr Turnbull dances, and their songbook includes dismantling Medicare, favouring coal over renewable energy, preventing marriage equality, destroying the union movement, cutting funds to public health, education, welfare and overseas aid.

A returned Liberal government would have us all singing along with that old familiar right-wing repertoire whether we like the lyrics or not.

I HAVE come up with a wild idea by using the submarine $50 billion or part thereof in building a tunnel across Bass Strait from the southern Victorian coast to King Island, to Stanley.

The all-steel 50 metre modules can be made in South Australia with Australian steel.

It would take a long time and French engineers could organise the designing and building of it.

Imagine the people that would be employed, preferring to use unemployed people to have employment over this period.

But of course, the alarm might wake me up shortly.