Business as usual toward developing countries will destabilize the world and threaten the prosperity of even the richest nations. Foreign assistance is an investment, not a handout. During a seminar on May 28 at Parliament House, organized by the Crawford Fund for International Agricultural Research, Pinstrup-Andersen urged some 250 Australian government and industry leaders to focus attention on assisting the expanding communities of Asia and the Pacific to ensure that they have access to sufficient food, water, education, health care, and employment. In addition to the importance of this assistance from a humanitarian perspective, Pinstrup-Andersen said that it is also in the economic interest of Australia. Australia need look no further than Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Thailand for examples of once-poor countries whose growing economies proved enormous export markets for Australia and other industrialized nations.
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