UN-necessary waste of resources

From ABC, October 9, 2006
Aust facing national housing crisis: UN

A preliminary report by the United Nations on housing availability in Australia has accused governments of failing to address homelessness and of breaching human rights.
The UN's Special Rapporteur on Housing, Miloon Kathari, toured Australia in August at the request of the Commonwealth.
The UN's initial findings call the lack of housing for poor or vulnerable people a 'national crisis'.
Executive director of Shelter South Australia, Gary Wilson, says few people realise the extent of the problem.
"Housing is a hidden crisis because most of us are comfortably well off," he said.
"We either own our own home or we're purchasing a home, but for people on the bottom 40 per cent of incomes, there's a lack of affordable, adequate, appropriate, safe and secure housing."
The final UN report is due for release early next year.

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I always wander why UN criticises Australia on little issues when basic human rights are violated in other countries.

They also don’t urge poor housing recipients, to look after beautiful and maybe not so beautiful accommodation and not vandalise and make it unfit for humans to occupy.

In my opinion they could better spend the UN dollar

Do you do anything productive?
Or are you a fulltime whinger?
Where can I get a job like that?

Bloveld said:

Do you do anything productive?
Or are you a fulltime whinger?
Where can I get a job like that?

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This seems rather unnecessarily antagonistic, Bloveld. Why?

I totally agree that whatever resources were spent on coming up with some criticism of Australian housing opportunities could much better be deployed in somewhere like the Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa or countless other places.

Julia

Happy said:

I always wander why UN criticises Australia on little issues when basic human rights are violated in other countries.

They also don’t urge poor housing recipients, to look after beautiful and maybe not so beautiful accommodation and not vandalise and make it unfit for humans to occupy.

In my opinion they could better spend the UN dollar

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As an Australian I'm grateful that someone is showing concern for the welfare of my fellow citizens. The UN will always be criticized, it is in the nature of its work, but inadequate housing is not a trivial issue, eventhough comparatively it may not be as vile as a crime like genocide, for example, it is still important in that it can indirectly prevent serious crime and social upheaval (and even genocide) from occurring.

The fact that the UN deals with many matters rather than with the most serious of crimes alone is, in my view, a commendable attribute. Could we draw an analogy with the local Police force? Maybe they should only deploy taxpayer funds to deal with serious crime and forget the various community policing schemes which can help prevent violence in the first place or maybe they should only police the worst crime ridden areas....

There is a direct correlation between a person's mental wellbeing and the standard of their housing- compare the homeless to most people who have a place to live, it's hard to say that both enjoy the same level of human 'rights' (cf. having a right and being able to enjoy it are two different things but that's another story....). Trying to improve housing standards in the first place through informed discussion is surely a good thing, especially if it leads to a society made up of well-balanced and healthy individuals.

Bloveld, hope you were having a one-off there ! Sometimes concern can sound like unnecessary complaining but what's worse is apathy, some issues are difficult to deal with but we need to face them nonetheless or they will get out of hand.

To make big impact on anything 80 – 20 principle should be applied.

To use little example - If I can reduce biggest losses of capital I can actually survive, if I equally address all issues, my little business might not exist before things turn around.



But as they say, two people three opinions

Happy said:

To make big impact on anything 80 – 20 principle should be applied.
To use little example - If I can reduce biggest losses of capital I can actually survive, if I equally address all issues, my little business might not exist before things turn around.
But as they say, two people three opinions

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Overly simplistic approach imo. Do you even know what the UN charter is?

I know that as any organisation, UN has limited funds and some solutions on utilisation of limited resources are universal.

I may be an ignoramous but that 80/20 approach makes great sense to me.

The govt should adopt this approach where traffic violations are concerned. A soft target and high revenue makes it unlikely though. There are multiples of preventable deaths through staph infections but what is being done? I think they have the 80/20 back the front there.

Julia said:

This seems rather unnecessarily antagonistic, Bloveld. Why?

I totally agree that whatever resources were spent on coming up with some criticism of Australian housing opportunities could much better be deployed in somewhere like the Sudan, Zimbabwe, South Africa or countless other places.

Julia

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Cos thats what I do.