Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition will not be opposing the Australian Civilian Corps Amendment Bill 2013, but I do want to use the opportunity afforded by this second reading debate to make a few points. The government's abolition of AusAID means that certain pieces of legislation need to be updated to substitute references to DFAT for references to AusAID. This legislation is simply an effort to ensure that employees of the Australian Civilian Corps remain properly employed. This bill transfers their Commonwealth engagement from the abolished AusAID to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The Australian Civilian Corps was a Labor initiative of the last parliament. We want to ensure that the Australian Civilian Corps operates under the certainty it needs, so we will not oppose this legislation. The ACC is a group of experienced civilian specialists who provide stabilisation and recovery assistance to fragile states and countries experiencing, or emerging from, conflict or natural disaster. The ACC was formed in 2011 and is designed to provide a flexible and timely Australian response that bridges the gap between humanitarian and emergency relief and long-term development programs. The ACC is well established, with more than 489 registered specialists as at October 2013 with extensive field experience and deep subject matter expertise across 14 specialty areas, such as electoral assistance, health, financial management, engineering and the law. Recently ACC specialists assisted with the 2013 PNG elections and with recovery efforts in Samoa following Cyclone Evan.

The ACC is a worthy and successful Labor initiative. While the opposition opposes the government's $4½ billion of cuts to Australia's foreign aid budget and has deep concerns about what this will mean for the loss of specialist experience in the delivery of foreign aid, these amendments are merely seeking to ensure the ACC is now operating under the direction of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. So, as I said, we will not be opposing the legislation.

But I do want to say a few words about why this legislation is necessary. The legislation would not have been necessary had the government not abolished AusAID. The integration of AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was executed suddenly and very poorly. Staff are going into this Christmas period with no certainty about their future and we do not know just how much expertise in international development policy is going to be lost as a result of AusAID's abolition.

We have seen the reports about how next year's graduate program has been scrapped—after two or three dozen new graduates had been given employment offers. We heard in Senate estimates a fortnight ago that this could leave the government open to legal action. It also means that we lose a generation of the best and brightest—idealistic young women and men who had performed outstandingly academically and who had chosen a career in overseas development as a way of representing their country and contributing to the world. The way the merger has been carried out, coupled with the huge $4½ billion cuts to the aid program, raises serious questions about how Australia's international development program will continue to be delivered.

What will be the impact on the delivery of foreign aid when a specialist international development agency is subsumed into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade? The government have been saying that the abolition of AusAID is because they want to see a better alignment between our aid programs and our trade programs and our diplomatic programs. I would be delighted if anyone could point to one example of where our aid programs and diplomatic programs and trade programs were in conflict. This is an absolutely spurious argument for the abolition of AusAID.

See this speech in context