"There are simple answers, they just are not easy ones," Ronald Reagan said in his Californian gubernatorial speech about the complex social problems the US then faced.
Half a century later that sentiment still holds weight, particularly as Australia's federal election approaches and debate about aid budgets and the efficacy of delivery escalates.
Labor's foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek promised to reverse cuts made by the coalition, and was swiftly criticised by current Foreign Minister Julie Bishop who said Labor had "absolutely trashed" the aid budget.
"Development is slow and it needs consistency and it needs predictability," non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, former Australian ambassador and former AusAID deputy director general Annmaree O'Keeffe says.
She argues cuts erode the value of existing aid investments. "In terms of an investment, to cut the budgets so arbitrarily [means] you're not only cutting down on predictability for the future, if you haven't finished projects then what you have done in the past is completed wasted. Nobody has actually looked at the sheer waste of taxpayer money when policy is changed."
That's partly because of the difficulty rallying any interest about aid among voters, something politicians are keenly aware of.
"Worrying about how the women of Vanuatu might deal with whatever they've got to deal with is not high on the list of priorities for Mr and Mrs Blogs out in Parramatta," O'Keeffe says.
"But it should be on our government's priorities because government's have to be big enough to understand that they are supposed to be bringing international leadership to the agenda."
International Women's Development Agency chief executive Joanna Hayter agrees the issue is about leadership.
"From where we sit in our region and around the world, we have a responsibility. To be both a good neighbour and a good global citizen we need to respect and respond to issues as big as poverty, inequality, violence, emergencies and natural disasters."
She questions whether that responsibility should extend to facilitating increased private sector involvement, on the basis that it encourages a singular view of economic growth as the be all and end all for global stability.
"To say that economic security is the answer to everything is exceedingly naive in a very complex world," Hayter, recognised as a Woman of Influence in 2013, says.
"We know we're not going to solve what is inherently cultural and institutional challenges, it doesn't matter if it's business, if it's the religions, if it's the governments… you can't do that through one great big economic model where the private sector are seen as the champions and the points of delivery."
This is where the aid debate becomes circular, and sticky. Ask anyone what the point of aid is, and they'll likely say, to fix poverty and boost economic growth. The flow on effect is assumed to be greater national security for Australia.
ANU professor Hugh White is quick to point out his specialty is strategic studies and defence, not aid. But the commonality between both policy areas, he says, is that people are very committed to the idea that the government should spend lots of money, without any clear idea of what the money is meant to achieve.
"Governments routinely say the purpose of aid is to eliminate poverty, which then boosts security. What they don't say, is that it also makes countries like us better, and allows us to shape what happens within those countries," White says.
"Particularly in relation to Indonesia, the massive investment in the schools program, which became our biggest single aid program, was predicated on the idea that if we built the schools we would be able to stop them teaching Islamic fundamentalism."
Using aid as a substitute for foreign policy, to get countries to like us better, will not work if its ultimate aim is essentially buying friends. "There's a famous saying in the public service, 'I don't know why he hates me, I've never done anything for him.'
"It reflects a profound psychological truth," White says. "[Charity] generates a kind of resentment, particularly if recipients have the sense that you're trying to get something for it."
A big fan of Reagan's gubernatorial quote, White says the answer to fixing the aid debate is a simple one: stop assuming aid will create sustained economic growth and subsequently eliminate poverty and boost security.
Instead, recognise that aid works well to alleviate the consequences of poverty.
He points to PNG, where Australia has run an "immense" aid program over generations that has failed to deliver economic growth or security.
"What Australian aid has done is help provide things like pharmaceuticals for people who wouldn't otherwise have access. That's real people, real child mortality rates, real maternal mortality reduced. That is worth doing. But we should say that's what we're doing."
O'Keeffe would disagree with White's assessment of PNG. She has spent considerable time in Bougainville, recently and during the peace program. "I can see how much has been achieved there. It is significant and a lot of that is Australian aid money and a commitment to PNG and Bougainvillians."
This content is generated in commercial partnership with Westpac Group as part of the 100 Women of Influence Awards.