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The Australian Defence Department announced today that it has signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with the Australian international aid agency AusAid. It says the agreement is aimed at getting closer cooperation between the department and agency and to recognise their shared strategic interests. But analysts say the partnership could reduce AusAid's role as the nation's primary aid body.

In remote parts of Laos, some small hotels and guesthouses are about to get what could be a significant boost to their profile with international travellers. It will come courtesy of just over $US200,000 worth of investment by a Lao-owned business support company and matching funds through Australia's aid program. It is one of nine projects approved under the latest grants from Australia's Enterprise Challenge Fund. But at least one non-government group is cautious about the fund's approach, warning against what it calls the "corporatisation" of poverty.

The Australian Taxation Office is to appear in the Federal Court today, seeking to establish a test case against charitable advocacy. The ATO’s case concerns AID/WATCH, a small charity that monitors Australia’s international aid programs.

We in the West - and, unfortunately, almost all economists - tend to assume everyone in the world wants more modern "money". Last week, the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said of the financial crisis: "What began with unrestrained greed on Wall Street has spread across every economy in the world." The blame might have been right, but the financial meltdown is not spreading to every economy. Some indigenous cultures are still chugging along quite happily, almost completely safe from the modern world's economic shenanigans.