Deltanine

The following appeared in the Dominion Post regarding the aid given for the Boxing Day tsunami

Less than half of the $94 million New Zealanders donated for the Boxing Day tsunami relief effort has been spent, as hundreds of thousands of victims continue to live in rotten tents and shacks.
...
An aid specialist said New Zealand may not have the bargaining power to pressure affected governments to hasten the recovery – as it was one of the few countries that had already distributed aid funds. Many others pledged money but are yet to deliver it.

This article is slanted in a way I'd more likely expect from Fox News.
For a start, if the reporter had bothered to question the reason why only half the aid money had been spent s/he would have discovered that it was in order to avoid corruption and waste - had all the money ben given out in the first few months it would have led to massive corruption and shoddy work being done in the rebuilding effort. It's also impossible to rebuild that many houses in a year - there just aren't enough people qualified to do the task.

The second paragraph I've included above really sickened me though. To suggest we should have withheld money as a "bargaining tool" like most other countries points to a far worse aspect of international aid. The fact is most aid pledged is never delivered. Here's a flash animation on the subject.