Dear Bono....

Ironically, the most efficient way to eradicate extreme poverty probably lies in even more neglect from the developed world. One might ask if this is at all possible when our representative administrations already give as little as they do to third world nations. But if we break down the elements of what we have learnt so far – deeming them as, in fact, true observations, then the end of extreme poverty would arise from not necessarily an abolishment of caring but more so an abolishment of doing. By the very justifications of our press councils, we can decipher that the very reason extreme poverty does not receive the press coverage it is entitled to is because of its fundamental ordinariness. Remember, ‘new’ makes up three quarters of the word ‘news’ and famine is about as predictable as tears at the end of Bold and the Beautiful.

If we can allow ourselves to imagine for a moment the various government and non-government organisations, charities, volunteer workers, United Nations projects, humanitarian doctors and nurses ─ the world takes for granted; these humanitarians not only perform the (sometimes hopeless) task of helping complete strangers live a fraction longer than they would on their own but they also relieve the developed world’s consciences from absolute and total neglect. Therefore, there is never going to be total neglect while there are good people in the world fighting injustices and committed to the task of plugging a finger or two into the ‘bucket with a billion holes’ so-to-speak.

As tragic as it sounds, even the low but constant level of awareness humanitarian efforts receive might even reduce the concern for extreme poverty in a way that weakens its presumed severity, in turn, promoting its immediate dismissal. Spend a moment picturing all the kind humanitarian work that takes place by all the good people in the continents of Africa and Asia. Now spend a moment to think of the repercussions if those humanitarian tasks were not carried out. What would happen if every doctor, every nurse, every holidaying volunteer and every UN employee were to go on strike? What would be the repercussions if every UN food parachute drop ceased to take place or anti-retro viral AIDS drug and anti-malaria bed net failed to be distributed to the various villages? What about the micro-finance institutions granting loans to poor entrepreneurs, allowing them to run small businesses and wean themselves out of the extreme poverty trap? What would happen if they decided to close their doors?

While humanitarian organisations help millions of people each year, their existence could well be what kills millions more, merely because of their ordinariness. Meanwhile, in the first world, as long as we know in the back of our minds that in a far off place, something is being done about these atrocities – we manage to peacefully commit to a night’s sleep. The truth however is that while certain organisations are participating in an effort to eradicate extreme poverty, their efforts, unfortunately, are minute, in comparison to the scheme of things. Today, 25,000 people die each day from the effects of famine while ten years ago it was 10,000 more. This shows that while awareness of extreme poverty has increased (resulting in humanitarian efforts becoming more fervent) there is still a great amount of people dying. And no matter how unacceptable this is, while the humanitarians keep behaving humanitarianly and while the media keeps behaving irresponsibly – the poverty cycle remains relatively constant. And it is this constant cycle which equals ordinariness and this ordinariness that equals boring, which subsequently then leads to more unnecessary deaths.

So strictly speaking, the answer to extreme poverty would lie not necessarily in less neglect but in total neglect. Therefore the answer lies in the unionist principles of going on strike and holding key stakeholders hostage until demands are met. As a result, the media would have no choice but to be intrigued; and at last the dogmas of terrorism could finally be used for good instead of evil. I can just see it now, the Anglo-Saxon doctor in the middle of the bush; his stethoscope like a scarf around a sunburnt neck; a medical kit in hand and dirt covering his scholarly face. The camera pans on the pregnant and dying Malawian woman lying on a broken stretcher. Instead of helping her, the doctor does nothing. His apostle-like staff do nothing too.

In my fantasy I also tune in to watch the story on the hungry Senegalese villagers, all looking up at the heavens and waiting for the miraculous and routine dropping of rations from the mysterious aircraft with the black letters UN painted on its wings. The aircraft circles the village and the camera is now inside the plane, beckoning a close-up of the bags of rice attached to pink parachutes which never leave the interior. These are certainly not mundane stories; they would make compelling viewing and fascinating reading.

An immediate campaign of total neglect would be the answer to the media’s problems. I mean let’s face it, civilians are sacrificed on a regular basis during wartimes. Forgoing a handful to preserve the lives of millions is treated as a necessary evil among the strategies of winning a war. So why not sacrifice a few million lives in 2010 to save a billion? They are only poverty-stricken lives anyway – their lives will never amount to the same as those of scientists or doctors or politicians. And consequently, the media attention would prove phenomenal. Footage of pregnant mothers left to die, children in agony from chronic malnutrition and humanitarians looking on would be enough to make people question just exactly what is going on. And as a result, people would question exactly how serious things really are.

Imagine what would happen if Save the Children or World Vision decided to cancel every child’s sponsorship deals in sub-Saharan Africa? Middle-income mums and dads who had told their 2.4 children little Mbecki was an equal member of their white suburban family would struggle merely breaking the news. We would be destined to soon see a couple of nightly news stories on the same typical suburban family travelling to Tanzania to personally see to it that their sponsored Tanzanian children still receive their daily food rations and dose of education. Unfortunately, the developed world’s reliance on charities and non-profit organisations as a way of easing our materialistic consciences is affecting the understanding of the bigger picture. Despite these groups accomplishing so much good in the world, our continued taking of them for granted contributes to added neglect. This is unacceptable.

Most of the time, humanitarians focus on the effort needed to stop these atrocities. But rarely do we stop to ponder the efforts that are being made and the work that is being done. Just think of the various times throughout the year we are subjected to confront the reality that is extreme poverty. We must endure conscience-trodden spiels that beg us to participate in contributing to charity. But we also rely on these awkward moments where we are forced to give to remind us of the obligation we are fulfilling in doing ‘our bit’ to help feed starving children. Therefore, as much as a little bit of knowledge can be a bad thing, so too can a little bit of charity.

Consequently, of course the answer is simple. The humanitarians need to put their feet up and go on strike. Red Cross needs to stop administering supplies, UNICEF must stop looking out for the children and backpacking volunteers/tourists need to forfeit the adventure of roughing it whilst finding their true inner-selves and resolving unresolved issues that need resolving with the added advantages of meeting new people in the heart of Kenya somewhere – and go to Ibiza instead. As a result, millions of people will tragically die at the hands of white Anglo-Saxons. The media will get their new angle on extreme poverty deaths and the first world population will be distraught by the goings-on of their usually rather reliable conscience-easers. There would be no choice then but for our governments to make a stronger commitment. No doubt it is a simple solution to an ever-growing problem.

But of course this is never going to happen. As practical as it might sound, no one involved in humanitarian aid is ever going to agree to go on strike. We are never going to see the news stories of UN public servants cooking risotto with the very staples they are meant to be distributing. It is just not going to happen. And the simple reason for this unlikely scenario is primarily due to the fact that people are essentially kind-hearted. Humanitarians were not drawn to humanitarian work because they wanted to hurt people but because they wanted to help. And as long as this kindness exists, (even if only in the minority) then so will the crisis. And as long as this crisis is being mildly tended to, then extreme poverty will continue to thrive. While our newspapers fail to report on extreme poverty deaths, the work being carried out will unfortunately never continue to be as productive as it could.

Sadly, the issue of extreme poverty constitutes only a portion of the general knowledge banks in everybody. However, the reality that it kills millions of people each year and the reality that it can plausibly come to an end is common knowledge to few. Frustratingly, we are divided by an informed world and an uninformed world. The informed world are those which are aware of the emergency and participate in its restoration. The uninformed world is made up of people who understand that there is a crisis taking place but truly believe it cannot be altered. While cynics might believe we live in a rather selfish world, too many events in our history have illustrated the contrary. Too many events in our history have proven that (a) ultimately people are kind and (b) we struggle in being able to watch people suffer.

Therefore, in theory, we should have a perfect system in place where if every key player in the process of news does their job, a type of social and political harmony should ensue. Therefore, to follow the process chronologically, it would start with the injustice inevitably occurring, followed by the injustice then being proportionately reported on, followed by the audience’s role of merely acting humane and reacting to the injustice with emotion, discussion and influence; and in turn influencing those elected to do their best in securing their jobs by remedying the injustice.

An example of this process can be seen in the truly amazing story of Australian three-year-old, Sophie Delezio. She and another gorgeous little girl, Molly Wood, were at their child care centre in Sydney on December 15, 2003, when an elderly man suffered a seizure whilst driving, ploughing his car through the centre’s fence, crashing through the window without even touching the sides. The room was filled with 36 sleeping children and struck both girls, trapping them underneath the vehicle which caught alight. Molly suffered third degree burns on her body and even had a heart attack while in hospital. Sophie, experiencing the same burns, lost one ear, both her feet and some of her fingers.

Consequently, the media attention was colossal and the highly astute Australian media knew only too well its kind-hearted audience would eat the story right up. You couldn’t even say parents alone were moved by the images; it affected everyone – good people; bad people; children and teens. Any person from any class from any sub-culture from any location was affected by seeing two small children going through something so awful. It is this collective attitude we all seem to possess that is important to acknowledge, not to meaninglessly praise the joys of the human spirit, but to practically identify the inconsistencies that lay in the injustices in our world today.

Therefore, the proportionate media attention, (thus, the appropriate amount of news coverage on such a horrible story where two children were suffering unimaginable pain) sparked an audience reaction which, in turn, produced the usual results. Approximately $2 million was raised by Australians and Sophie’s ended up parents establishing the Day of Difference Foundation raising money for research into child burns. And while this should be the part of the story where the final effect in the chain reaction of responsibilities would be identified, the events of May 5, 2006 cannot be omitted.

Almost two and a half years after the initial accident, whilst being pushed in her wheelchair by a caretaker, Sophie Delezio endured another accident when she was hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing, of all places, and projected 18 metres. As a result she received a torn lung, broken jaw, fractured ribs, broken shoulder and bruising to her head. The driver in this incident was also an elderly gentleman and the same media attention followed. The odds were being compared to winning the lottery twice. However, odds aside, the public sector responded to the media attention and public outcry with the Roads and Traffic Authority increasing warning signs at the crossing within hours of the accident occurring and later installing traffic lights, recognizing that the initial signage was inadequate. The State Government also immediately brought into discussion lowering the age of mandatory medical checks for drivers at the age of 75 to 80. Hence, while this example of process might be slight in comparison to the vast injustice of extreme poverty, it is a prime example of the media doing its job in producing a story; the audience carrying out its instinctive response to reacting to that story and the government, in turn, acting upon that reaction.

But it must not be discarded that the circumstances of little Sophie were far from ordinary. The media’s emphasis on the unusualness of certain events to gain coverage says a lot about how their agenda is set. While there is no argument news mediums objectively wish to inform and entertain audiences, the opportunity to do both at the same time is exceedingly more tempting. Don’t forget, half-hour or one-hour news bulletins only make up a fraction of the news stories included in a standard metropolitan newspaper. Therefore, there is little wonder why stories without corresponding images do not make it onto the 6 o’clock news. This is not to say there have never been times when extreme poverty was interesting. The ghastly images from Ethiopia in the 1980s as well as the devastating civil war in Rwanda in the early 90s brought about much entertainment for the western world as well as an influx in starvation jokes. I mean, after all, those bellies weren’t swollen – they were from drinking too much African beer. Hilarious! But the ever-constant presence of unnecessary starvation has not only desensitized the masses, it has bored us.

But like Jesus Christ conveniently sacrificing a normal life of nagging spouse and 2.4 Jewish children to save us all from our own ghastly sins, so do the humanitarians of today. If there indeed is a God and the only reason he or she has not given up on this detestable world sending down a firestorm, it is due to our ambassadors of kindness in the discourse community of philanthropy and humanitarianism. These are the people who remind us of the kindness everyone else once possessed but most lost either when Noah built the ark or when some form of loss entered our lives. They are the people who save us from being truly shallow, unredeemable and soulless creatures.

I was fortunate enough to interview one of our saviours in July 2007. Young Australian of the Year nominee Phoebe Williams is a 26-year-old third year medical student from the University of Sydney. A graduate in development economics, Williams described her new science-based avenue of study as like nothing she had ever done before. She visited eastern Africa the same year I went to the German province of Munich to drink litres of beer in large steins and use the only German phrase of "du bist sehr nett" to any fellow drunk who passed my way. For Williams, however, she was able to use her trip to see first-hand what is the biggest humanitarian emergency in our world today. After seeing what she saw, she said she felt no choice but to make a promise that she would return.

The following year in 2005, more faithful than most nations’ Official Development Assistance pledges, Williams got together with some fellow academics, mostly medical students, and raised $100,000 to help her found the Hands of Help foundation in Uganda. A volunteer-based charity, Hands of Help works to alleviate poverty for people living in developing countries. Some of its projects have included the building of the St Francis Orphanage in Nairobi, a primary school in remote Uganda and conducting research on basic preventative health care in small villages.

But while there are many humanitarians whose expertise conveniently matches their motivations, Williams is an interesting character as the sequence of events leading up to Hands of Help almost happened in reverse. I think it’s fairly safe to say that you know you’re dealing with someone fairly committed when they wake up one day and realize they’d be of better use to the cause if they were medically trained as a GP. Phoebe Williams decided to spend the next six to eight years studying medicine for the mere advantage it would bring to the alleviation of extreme poverty. With little to no science background, Williams went back to uni so she could provide both the immediate support of medical attention to the poor in addition to the secondary assistance of future economic management in relation to her development economics expertise. And although it might seem perspicuous, it was the constant misery providing much of her motivation, Williams said it was the opposite. She states:

"When you see those (child sponsorship) commercials on TV the children look so bleak and unhappy but that isn’t always what you came across at all. The children I see, it is true are unbelievably poor, but they are never these miserable pictures we are constantly shown; they are happy, with little to be happy about ─ they have beautiful smiles and infectious laughs. They have nothing but there is nothing miserable about them."

But Williams might have even told us more than she thinks. Whether we want it or not, and while the existentialists might think differently, life is a gift. If even the poorest of the poor can be happy, what does this say about our definition of misery? Perhaps extreme poverty isn’t the biggest humanitarian crisis in our world today if these people have experienced no different. Does this explain the high birth rate in sub-Saharan Africa? Do mothers really want their unborn children to experience the beauty of this world, even if it is only for a short while? That certainly is inconsistent with middle-class Anglo Saxon relations who jovially request they be shot if they ever reach an age where they might not be as independent as they once were. If this is so, then there is even more reason to help. These are truly interesting people with vastly different outlooks on life who are worth saving with values people of the first world could do with gaining an insight into.

The reason the rest of us believe life can be miserable is because what we love constantly is taken away from us. Nights of fun are exchanged the following day with hangovers; romantic relationships are exchanged with breakups; friendships with conflict; family with loss. The Christians traditionally placed emphasis on the words of Christ, ‘blessed are the poor’ and perhaps it is not even the humanitarians saving us all from the wrath of God but the poor people themselves. Their suffering is almost like keeping the world balanced with wealth and greed.

To go off on a tangent somewhat, although I was not born while my mother’s father was still alive, he is the one person I have always wanted to meet. If the posthumous words of others indeed describe the people we were and how we existed then my grandfather could not have been a nicer guy. Alex Mitchell owned a tea plantation in Ceylon before immigrating to Australia in the late 1960s. I always wanted to meet him for many reasons but mostly when I was older and other people’s kindness began to interest me.

Unfortunately, being able to see kindness everywhere in everyone does little for one’s self-esteem. It makes you insecure, think less of yourself and long for the same characteristics of compassion everyone else seems to possess. When you initially tend to hate people even before meeting them as I do, it never takes very long for someone to get better from there. People always become likable through revealing some sort of unintentional kindness. Even the lowliest types of people redeem themselves eventually by merely being good with kids or defending their fellow low-lives they love. Others might become redeemed by actually taking an interest in another person’s boring story no one else would care for; for example a trip taken somewhere or an ear infection one of their kids might have had. Even idiots compelled to tell others to avoid a specific restaurant because of slow service is only trying to make sure the other person will not be disappointed as they had been. Surprisingly, kindness can turn the most unlikable people into those far worthier than our selves.

My mother, grandmother, uncles and aunties all described my grandfather as a tremendously gentle and caring man. He died of a stroke at the young age of 56 in 1978. I was too late in ever meeting him and a few years more in having a worthwhile memory. A third-world country, Ceylon continues to have some of the poorest people in the world. And as many middle-class Sri-Lankans did, my grandfather possessed a number of servants on his tea estate. It was these workers and their families that he would constantly provide extra for financially on a regular basis. The beggars of Kandy and Colombo who’d line the streets like a parade would also be recipients to his constant generosity. According to my mother, he was a loving and humane man with no temper and more generous than he could afford.

The grandfather I did meet was on my father’s side. Les McErlain was a fun person to have around ─ of Irish descent, a WWII veteran who was irreverent, raucous, inane; not at all senile but never serious. He was a larrikin. Pop was a kind man too; he’d buy his grandchildren whatever we wanted on whatever geriatric pension was going at the time. He was great with kids. He was a fantastic. He even got along so well with my mother’s side that he went to Sri Lanka with relatives on mum’s side. It wasn’t until after he died that I discovered that the reason he was so fantastic a grandfather was ultimately due to the fact that he was a lousy father. A big drinker after the war Les was apparently nothing like he was the fifteen years or so before he died. The jokes were few back then and the drinks aplenty. Despite my father always seeming to get along with him well enough during those later years, I guess he was always a bit stiff for being left with the post wartime memories.

The reason I like the stories of my two grandfathers is because of their vast differences. They were men from opposite sides of the world blessed with kind hearts for different reasons. One was gentle in temperament, grateful in spirit and could afford to be kind; the other was seeking redemption through his grandchildren. It goes back to my earlier notion that kindness can find its way back to you. Even their deaths were poetic with the Good Samaritan dying young and the redeemer not leaving until his penance had been paid. Despite not being a very religious person, if somebody who was were to tell me the reason euthanasia was erroneous was due to certain things needing to be resolved by that person during their suffering, I might think they could have a point. It might even make me think of suffering in a whole new way. However, this isn’t my point. My point is that which ever side a person stands on a certain issue, it is usually done so with the kindest of intentions.

Despite always enjoying the latest Michael Moore installment, the Oscar-winning anti-gun documentary, Bowling for Columbine, showed just why Moore and his team believed guns were killing Americans and not liberating them. But the film failed to go into detail as to why people wanted guns in the first place. While it was never discussed, the truth remains that the pro-gun lobbyists in the film actually believed guns were in fact helping keep their families safer. No one lobbying for guns in the film wanted anybody hurt. Whether they were represented to be ignorant, ill-informed or inbred, these people actually believed those guns were vital in the role of protecting their families. Did they want guns in their homes because they hated their families? No, it was because they loved them. Did they want guns in their homes because they were mean-spirited? No, it was because they were kind.

The world being filled with kindness is the only reason why the world is worth saving at all. It is only unfortunate that we can sometimes be stupid, which gets in the way of us doing truly kind things. And although we might think it, the information age did not begin with the internet. We’ve spent the past 100 years being able to witness the goings on of our world via photographs, cinema, television and semi-affordable air-travel. Yet we continue to treat famine deaths like they are unwelcome memories of a trusted uncle who touched us in the naughty places. Extreme poverty is not an issue we need to come to terms learning how to deal with; it is an issue urgently needing to be tended to now.

But slowly, the information age is beginning to give to us some information. In April 2007, the humble internet search-engine turned corporate giant, Google, revealed to us that it would use its immense powers for good as a substitute for evil. Using its online mapping service Google Earth, the company aimed to bring attention to the atrocities taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan. In conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google modernized Google Earth with high resolution satellite images of the various refugee camps, illustrating destroyed villages and its people displaced. The United Nations believe more than two million people have been displaced throughout the past five years with hundreds of thousands confirmed dead. The Sudan government claims only 9,000 have died which teaches us two things; one is to avoid letting a Sudanese public servant hold the scorecard in a game of golf; and two is that it is still possible for an entire country’s government to dispute a holocaust is indeed taking place.

Promising to consistently update the images on a regular basis, Google has enhanced the resolution for specific areas in Darfur for users to zoom in and see the burnt remnants of houses and infrastructure villagers once had. While the spotlight on Sudan was in fact the museum’s idea, it shows tremendous leadership from Google as a highly popular information source to agree to it. The company has taken a responsible stance by agreeing to use its position in the public eye for something positive and influential.

The problem with traditional news mediums is that they still take part in very much old-school styles. An ‘us-and-them’ mentality, news readers and television presenters refuse to participate in the celebrity persona. Celebrities are to be reported on; therefore journalists distance themselves from the role of the celebrity and the responsibility of acting responsibly and as role models. Unless of course they need extra cash and decide to take part television commercials for moisturizer.

Director of the holocaust museum based in Washington, Sara Bloomfield, said that her priority was making people aware of the atrocities still taking place in Sudan. And there could be no better place to heighten awareness than on a website that had been downloaded by more than 200 million people. In an interview with Fairfax Media Bloomfield stated:

"Google Earth is like the world’s biggest bulletin board. When it comes to responding to genocide, the world’s record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most."

And while the authorities in Sudan still deny genocide has taken place in Darfur, the media acts equally as appalling by affirming that genocide is taking place in Darfur and then continuing to allocate a bee’s dick worth of editorial space on the issue in their broadsheets. Meanwhile, Google has respectably decided it will take on a role as militia watchdog by utilizing its resources on surveying Darfur. Conveniently for Google, however, the decision would also relieve pressure from criticism it had received after deciding to replace post Katrina-hit images of New Orleans with those of the region before the hurricane had struck. As hilarious as it is pondering whose idea it was to replace those images, it is more productive to look upon the entire event as letting bygones be just that.

Even loaded celebrities are abiding by the Spiderman dogma of, with great power comes great responsibility. Steven Spielberg who has spent most of his years committing himself to ensuring no one forgets that the Holocaust did in fact take place, woke up to realize genocide was still going on today. Perhaps evoked by actress Mia Farrow, but ultimately in a stroke of creative genius, Spielberg ignored traditional celebrity-style inclinations to write blank cheques and hold forgettable rock concerts, instead deciding to put the pressure somewhere other than Africa. Knowing China’s economic ties to Sudan, he thought at a time leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games when reputation is everything for your average communist world-event-host, he would write a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao requesting China change its policy toward Sudan and pressure its government into accepting United Nations peacekeepers as a way of protecting the victims in Darfur. The Chinese, were at first reluctant to swing towards any such recommendations as they quite enjoyed their ties with Sudan (as they get them cheap oil for their 2-stroke lawn mowers in return for guns), but soon enough, in the month of September 2007, the Chinese government thought it a grand idea, giving in to Spielberg’s demands.

On September 15, 2007, as a way of illustrating Beijing’s desire to be seen as a champion in bringing peace to Sudan, China put on a show for the world to see, displaying its military peacekeepers with their toiletries bags packed ─ ready for deployment. China’s special diplomatic representative for Darfur, Liu Gruijin, broadcasted from the United Nations headquarters in New York, China’s commitment to persuading the Sudanese government to drop its opposition to a full UN peacekeeping force. The UN has had increasing trouble with the Sudan administration after the UN Security Council deployed 26,000 troops, the largest peacekeeping unit in the world, to Darfur in July, 2007.So the next time you think E.T was the greatest thing Spielberg ever did, don’t forget the humble letter he penned, crippling one of the gravest countries in the world’s murderous international policy enforcing turning a blind eye towards the murders in Sudan.

In the same month, Spielberg also wrote a $1million cheque to George He’s-So-Dreamy Clooney’s Ocean’s 13 Save Darfur campaign. For the movie director just to make the headlines made a statement that more and more celebrities were using their notoriety to raise awareness for Africa with the result alluding to a moral, good and kind thing. While Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt and Don Cheadle all throwing $1 million here and $9 million there equate to about a packet of chips for the average person’s fortnightly income – the important thing is that they use their presence in the media as a tool to extend awareness of the suffering going on in Africa. Therefore, these celebrities, no matter how much we love them, hate them or are afraid our husbands or wives would leave us for them in a heartbeat, are behaving responsibly by not just taking advantage of that power, but failing to allow the opportunity to go by.

To bring the topic a little closer to home, when Australian rugby league player, Luke Priddis, who plays football for my hometown of Penrith, married his wife Holly, they later had a son, Cooper, who was later diagnosed with autism. Now while it is common knowledge that charitable work for sports stars is always in the best interests of the athlete (particularly for sports with players traditionally badly-behaved) there are separate motivations entirely when the charity work blossoms from a personal cause. While it is no shocking twist that Luke and Holly Priddis would go on to discover a lack of services in western Sydney for parents of children with autism and, in turn, humbly establish their own foundation for families with special needs children; there is still more to their motivations to be seen in setting up a charity beyond the benefits one’s own child might receive.

What also won’t come across as shocking in this story is that the most interesting claim to come from Luke and Holly Priddis didn’t come from the one making a living by being dropped on his head each week. In an interview on the ABC’s 7.30 Report, when Luke was asked if he felt happy with using his rugby league profile to set up a charity, his wife (as wives tend to) spoke for him.

"I didn't give him an option I just told him. I just felt it would be negligent coming from our experience as a parent and being in the public eye that we really just had to do something. I'm not the type of person who will sit back and wait for something to happen. I've had enough of that. With the rate of diagnosis of autism, the demand for places and services is going through the roof. The waiting lists are getting longer and longer. Something needed to be done. We were just in an ideal position to do something."

It is also important to add that we of western Sydney have never been famous for our bright ideas. Adjectives and washing one’s hands before dinner have really only just taken off in Penrith. But Holly and Luke’s decision to rectify a political problem in their hometown goes beyond a mere example of the practicality of human kindness. Holly Priddis described it as a social obligation, even going to the extent of deeming it negligent to have a husband in a career where he is frequently in the public eye, and not taking advantage of this fact for a worthy cause. This action therefore is even bigger than our predisposition towards needing to do good in order to give our lives meaning.

Acting responsibly is more than just acting maturely. Acting responsibly is practical ─ it is doing. For example, while a person who doesn’t drink alcohol because their parents were killed by a drunk-driver, might have given their lives meaning by choosing not to drink, their decision (whether made consciously or not) has not done anything for the overall problem of drink-driving. To extend the analogy now to our central discussion of extreme poverty, not only is our media acting impractically, irresponsibly and negligently by failing to report on the biggest humanitarian crisis taking place in our world today, but it is acting mean-spiritedly, without kindness and without the one idiosyncratic trait that tends to encapsulate human nature in almost everyone. Remember, for most people it is a chore watching others suffer. The regular fit and proper person takes little pleasure in seeing others living in agony. This is where kindness and responsibility go hand-in-hand.

To be fair to the ones trying to do the right thing, we haven’t always seen our media so smug in the way things are being run. Sometimes the kindest act can be found in the sheer frustration of the madness. In late June of 2007, American MSNBC newsreader Mika Brzezinski, protested the magnitude of news coverage Paris Hilton had been receiving, by refusing to read the lead story of her prison-sentence for driving with a suspended licence. In between two male newscasters making light of Brzezinski’s objection, Brzezinski refused to budge, attempting to burn her script only to be impeded by one of the heckling Muppets book-ending her. Her intention was to go on to the second story concerning a Republican Senator’s new opposition towards former President Bush’s handling of the Iraq war, however, the constant pushing of the Hilton story by the program’s producer, Andy Jones, led to Brzezinski shredding her script.

The culture of journalism however has gone far beyond the practices of being mindful of responsible reporting. If we let our moral compass operate by the dogma of choosing one’s battles, then the Brzezinski example was a fairly obvious and easy choice for a journalist to find the courage to stand one’s grand. But the tragedy of the fact is that it is not only the trivial entertainment reports that need to take a backseat – it’s pretty much every story. A body count so high on a daily basis from a problem so treatable, manageable and utterly tragic does deserve to remain the number one concern until it is no longer. If an asteroid had been calculated to destroy the planet earth in 10 years time, you could count on our media’s major priority being to update the world on the latest plans of attack in stopping this event from occurring.

It mustn’t be forgotten that news must compete with one another in order to gain its dominance in the hierarchy. For Brzezinski to stand up and say that there were other stories more important and more deserving in precedence than the Hilton lead MSNBC had chosen to run with that day, then it illustrated a journalist’s concern towards the possibility that other important stories would be left out of the bulletin, due to the confines of the program. But even so, an Iraq War story should fall behind in precedence; a violent student protest and a new tax-reform policy should fall behind in precedence; a plane crash or an earthquake killing any number of people less than 25,000 people should fall behind in precedence. Stupidity as well as ignorance has slowly taken over the audience’s kind natures. The less we see what is really happening in Uganda; in the Philippines; in India; in Bangladesh; in Brazil and in so many other countries – the more inevitable it is that we won’t care.

But the reason we need to care beyond the abstract notions of what is good and what is moral ─ is that if we do not, we are trivializing the very stories we have in our own backyards. The cancers; the hit-and-runs; the rapes; the miscarriages; the molestations; the everyday sadness in our lives and in others we have no idea in knowing how to console. If we let what is happening in the third world continue to take place then we have no answers for the sorrow and the shame we endure in the first. It just doesn’t make sense to allow extreme poverty coincide with the rhetoric of the ‘spirit’ of the Olympic Games or the patriotism in our appreciation towards our own great nations. At this point in time we are living in a crazy, nonsensical world where really, nothing else should matter.