Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

This report of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Australia’s overseas representation: punching below our weight?, comes at a most opportune time, given that just this weekend the Prime Minister released the Australia in the Asian century white paper. Our report follows earlier inquiries which also identified chronic underfunding of our diplomatic services over a very long period of time. At the moment, DFAT manages 95 overseas posts in 77 countries. It also manages 46 consulates headed by honorary consuls. Of these, 23 are in countries with no other Australian embassies or high commissions.

We have in the past played a very important role in global diplomacy. I refer in particular to the work that was carried out in the fifties and sixties, when we were the major architects of the Antarctic Treaty System. Successive prime ministers then also played important roles in negotiating bans on mineral exploitation and on military activity in the Antarctic. We have done an enormous job in the past with the Security Council of the United Nations. It now seems that we are no longer capable of pulling the weight we should as a middle power—because we are underinvesting in our diplomatic effort. Our inquiry found that, compared with other OECD countries and the G20, Australia's diplomatic representation footprint is amongst the smallest, ranking 25th out of 34 OECD countries. One of the ways our diplomatic posts and DFAT have tried to overcome the shortfalls in funding and in the number of posts is, increasingly, to employ locally engaged staff.

We are concerned, having talked and taken evidence about this in our inquiry, about the relative efficacy and performance of the increasing number of locally-engaged staff who are often employed as a cost-saving measure. We believe that there should be ongoing dialogue with interested parties—for example, the Migration Institute of Australia—given that they are often made aware of issues or concerns about equitable or appropriate treatment of Australian embassy or high commission clients. We need to make sure that, if you come to an Australian embassy or high commission, you are treated in the way that Australians would expect to be treated in Australia when doing business with a public agency.

We took evidence about the sometimes competing or poorly-coordinated actions of state agents-general or other state or territory trade representatives working overseas. We have recommended that COAG discuss the location, coordination and effectiveness of this plethora of often piecemeal representation, which can confuse new markets. Some markets, indeed, are not aware of where our states are located, and, when they are told about competing products or services, this can be to the detriment of the development of our trade rather than support it.

Whilst we have substantially increased our foreign aid budget, and whilst this increase has bipartisan support, it has not been matched by an adequately increased capacity in Australia's network of posts to match the additional funds to ensure best value for money and adequate recognition of Australia's contribution. We need to make sure that as we are increasing this foreign aid budget—as we should and must—we at the same time overcome past problems by ensuring that AusAID, our embassies and our posts can properly manage the additional budget on the ground.

We are very concerned that a lot of our diplomats have to cover a number of countries—in Africa, in particular. We have engaged with some of our superb diplomats whose task is to try to represent Australian in five or six different countries. This is almost an impossible task. I have already mentioned that sometimes we then resort to honorary consulates, which do the best they can, but it is not the same as having Australian diplomatic missions. I commend the report to the House. It is most timely.

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