![\"Capture_2013_08_05_17_47_42_570\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nofibs.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/Capture_2013_08_05_17_47_42_570.png?resize=518%2C290\")
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By\u00a0Georgina Moore<\/a>,<\/p>\n 5 August, 2013<\/p>\n The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anna Burke, has wondered aloud whether she still belongs in the ALP after recent cuts to foreign aid and the party’s new\u00a0hardline policy on asylum seekers.<\/p>\n Speaking at a candidates forum in Melbourne on Sunday night, the member for Chisholm\u00a0said the government needed to reach the nation\u2019s goal of increasing foreign aid to 0.7 per cent of the gross national income faster.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we should be getting to the 0.7 [per cent] quicker, but I\u2019m not the one sitting in finance and budget so I can make those comments,\u201d Ms Burke said.\u00a0In 2010, Labor\u00a0pledged<\/a>\u00a0to increase foreign aid to 0.5 percent of gross national income by 2015, but last Friday\u00a0the government announced $879 million worth of\u00a0cuts<\/a>\u00a0to Australia\u2019s foreign aid budget.<\/p>\n \u201cSometimes I even wonder why I run for the Labor Party.\u201d<\/p>\n Ms Burke said progress with agreements such as the United Nations\u00a0Millennium Development Goals<\/a>\u00a0aimed at halving extreme poverty, halting the spread of HIV\/AIDS and providing universal primary education by 2015 were linked to reducing numbers of boat arrivals.\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve been talking a lot about asylum seekers (and) a lot of that goes back to poverty. The original view of the Millennium Development Goals was to eradicate poverty, which can eradicate a whole range of issues.\u201d<\/p>\n She also called on the government to increase its yearly humanitarian intake to 30,000\u2014a third above the Houston Report\u2019s now implemented recommendation of 20,000.<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve got to remember that we take about 200,000 people a year on all other visas; it\u2019s a very small grouping that we take on this humanitarian one,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms\u00a0Burke said the\u00a0UN Refugee Convention<\/a>\u00a0should be expanded to cover crises such as starvation.\u00a0\u201cIt doesn\u2019t look at people who are in starvation. It doesn\u2019t actually talk about some of the more modern-day crises, so\u00a0we need to actually expand it, because some of it had been very much around political persecution \u2026 There are now a lot of refugees who aren\u2019t being persecuted but still have to flee some devastation in their own land.\u201d<\/p>\n The UN Refugee Convention defines a refugee as \u201csomeone who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion\u201d.<\/p>\n Ms Burke has already\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0Kevin Rudd\u2019s plan to process asylum seekers and resettle refugees in Papua New Guinea will cost her votes. She holds\u00a0Chisholm<\/a>\u00a0with a margin of 5.8 per cent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By\u00a0Georgina Moore, 5 August, 2013 The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Anna Burke, has wondered aloud whether she still belongs in the ALP after recent cuts to foreign aid and the party’s new\u00a0hardline policy on asylum seekers. Speaking at a candidates forum in Melbourne on Sunday night, the member for Chisholm\u00a0said the government needed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,3546,66,585,842,757],"tags":[99,1077,2601,2611,2590,1076,283,1074,2578,1073,479,1075],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-1Y6","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56471,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7570\/revisions\/56471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}