‘Farmers aren’t dying’: Peter Singer urges Aussies to help people in less fortunate countries

Australians should stop sending money to drought-stricken farmers who have access to support and won’t die of starvation, says a world-renowned philosopher. He also backed Israel Folau and believes he shouldn’t be punished for expressing his beliefs.

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Australians should stop sending money to drought-stricken farmers who have access to support and won’t die of starvation, says world-renowned philosopher Peter Singer.

Instead, that money should be sent overseas to save lives in less fortunate countries, where every dollar will have a greater impact.

Mr Singer, regarded as the most influential living philosopher on the planet, has never shied from a provocative view, nor is he the first person to try help the global poor.

But his organisation — The Life You can Save, launching in Australia this week — approaches the problem from a novel angle, channelling donations to high-impact charities that aren’t tied up in administrative costs and poor practices.

Philosopher Peter Singer said Aussies should be helping others in less fortunate countries.

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They are hand-picked by analysts and proven to be “most effective”, he says.

“The farmers, although they’re experiencing hardship, are not in danger of starving to death, or not having healthcare, or not sending their children to school. So yes, I do think the money we spend on drought or flood relief is better spent overseas.”

He added: “I think we should be sympathetic to anyone suffering hardship, but I don’t feel the fact that people are Australian is an overriding reason for supporting them (instead of) others suffering greater hardship. I don’t think there’s anyone in Australia who’s going to starve to death because the land has flooded or suffered drought — but it’s clear that people are starving in areas without the government support system that we have.”

Some Australians might bristle or disagree with this perspective, but Mr Singer is not especially focused on farmers.

Instead, his eye is on wasteful spending at any level — micro and macro. Guide Dogs, for example, noble as they are, are an expense he’s previously singled out because the cost of training one animal, for one person, could be better spent restoring sight to hundreds of people.

Farmers across the country have been severely hit by the drought. Picture: Jonathan Ng

Arts funding is another bugbear. “In a world that has the serious problems we have, I don’t believe you get good value donating to the arts,” he says. “I’m not really persuaded that money makes a difference to the art we produce.”

Sometimes jarring, often persuasive, occasionally controversial, these logical contributions and arguments are the reason why Mr Singer was awarded Australia’s highest honour — an AC — in 2012.

He’s carved out positions on many fronts, arguing that Holocaust denial should not be a crime, that overweight people should pay higher costs for airline tickets, and that parents should have a right to terminate a newborn baby in some exceptional circumstances.

A committed atheist, he has also backed Israel Folau in his fight against Rugby Australia, saying the football player should not have been punished for expressing his religious beliefs, though perhaps ridiculed for his quackery.

Mr Singer also backed Israel Folau and believes he should not be punished for expressing his beliefs. Picture: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft

“I’m somewhat concerned that expressing a person’s religious beliefs, and (beliefs) that have been part of the Christian tradition for many centuries, should make it impossible for that person to engage in their profession,” Mr Singer says.

“The appropriate response is to laugh at it.”

But it’s the morality of doing nothing in the face of unnecessary suffering that has long been at the heart of Mr Singer’s efforts, and what has now brought his attention back to Australia (he teaches at Princeton University).

A number of initiatives have been helping farmers in the last year, including the drought relief concert in Tamworth and the recent Adopt A Farmer Campaign by The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph. Picture: Luke Drew

Suffering, he says, is the common thread that’s run through his career since Animal Liberation, the book that catapulted him to prominence in 1975, and which has since been canonised as a founding text of the animal rights movement.

Between the treatment of animals and the treatment of humans, especially those living in misery, the principle remains the same: by doing nothing we are somewhat complicit in their suffering.

“And it’s not very difficult for us to reduce it,” he says. “There are simple ways to help people be better off — they just require redirection of philanthropic efforts that are already there, and in some cases an increase in those efforts.”

Australia’s foreign aid spending has been gradually declining since 2012 and is presently less than one per cent of gross national income, according to recently released budget papers.

This spending, on Mr Singer’s account, falls well short of community expectations. “We’re giving Australians a chance to say, this is not enough for me.”

Some people might argue that overseas concerns are less pressing than those in our backyard. It’s this logic, flawed in Mr Singer’s opinion, that he’s working hardest to expose. His now-famous ‘Girl in the Pond’ thought experiment points out that people wouldn’t think twice about saving a small girl drowning in a pond — so why do we hesitate when the pond is on the other side of the world?

“We all spend money on things that are not at all essential for our wellbeing and happiness,” he says, naming bottled water and expensive watches as the main culprits. “I’m not going to tell people to stop buying themselves a coffee — though I would tell them to drink water out of a tap, that seems an obvious one. We’re just saying, you’ve got a lot. It’s not hard to redirect some of that.”

To find out more visit www.thelifeyoucansave.org

Originally published as ‘Farmers aren’t dying’: Peter Singer urges Aussies to help people in less fortunate countries