Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 18 September 2013, the Prime Minister announced that he would recommend to the Governor-General that the Australian Agency for International Development—AusAID—be integrated into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade—DFAT. The abolition of AusAID as an executive agency on 1 November 2013 marked a very significant milestone for Australia's international engagement and a new era in diplomacy. DFAT is now responsible for development policy and the delivery of Australia's aid program. This major change will see the alignment of Australia's foreign, trade and development policies and programs. The integration of AusAID with DFAT will promote Australia's national interests by contributing to international economic growth and poverty reduction, and it will support Australia's foreign and trade policy.

The bill addresses the resultant machinery of government changes required to update certain legislation by substituting references to AusAID and specific positions in AusAID with references to DFAT and positions in DFAT. The Australian Civilian Corps Act 2011, and the regulations and legislative instruments made pursuant to that act, are examples of such legislation. The Australian Civilian Corps Act 2011 established the Australian Civilian Corps and set out the legal framework for the employment and management of Australian Civilian Corps employees. The Director-General of AusAID was responsible for the management of the Australian Civilian Corps and the Director-General of AusAID had a specific range of functions and powers under the act including, on behalf of the Commonwealth, all the rights, duties and powers in respect of the Australian Civilian Corps employees.

The bill amends the act in two main ways. First, it transfers the powers and functions of the Director-General of AusAID under the act to the Secretary of DFAT. Second, it substitutes other references to AusAID and the Director-General of AusAID with DFAT and the Secretary of DFAT, respectively. The bill also makes consequential amendments to the Australian Civilian Corps Regulations 2011, the Prime Minister’s Australian Civilian Corps Directions 2012 and the Director-General’s Australian Civilian Corps Directions 2011.

As I stated at the outset, the bill is a significant milestone in Australia's international engagement and marks a new era in diplomacy. DFAT is now responsible for development policy and the delivery of Australia's aid program. This major change will see the alignment of Australia's foreign trade and development policies and program. It is also necessary step in getting Australia's foreign aid program back on track after six years of Labor's waste and mismanagement. On 12 May 2011, the Daily Telegraph reported the leaked concerns of a Labor insider that Australian taxpayers would be footing an extra $2 billion in foreign aid bills because Labor was fearful of upsetting the then Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd. It was also reported at the time that the ballooning aid spending in various regions, including Africa and the Caribbean—where Mr Rudd was chasing votes for a seat on the 15-member UN Security Council—was causing alarm within the government. There were significant concerns that the government was signing tax treaties with small islands in the Caribbean, again in its chase for a coveted UN position. But it is absolutely typical of the chaos and the dysfunction of this last six years of the Labor government that Labor MPs so feared that asking Mr Rudd to trim his expanding budget would cause an internal fight that they had to go and find savings which hurt families.

At the time I raised concerns that the Labor government, under the ever-egotistical guidance of the former member for Griffith, was chasing votes in Africa at the expense of sending more aid dollars to places in our region such as Papua New Guinea. We have seen in recent years outbreaks of extreme-resistance TB—and even, in this day and age, cholera outbreaks—in our nearest neighbour. I specifically stated that the coalition was really concerned about the large amount of funding going to the Middle East and Africa and any resultant waste in supporting votes for the UN Security Council at the expense of supporting priority foreign aid needs in our region—the Pacific—whose countries have some of the highest HIV-AIDS rates in the world and the highest rates of infant mortality. Sure enough my own fears and the coalition's concerns were borne out months later, when it was revealed that the Labor Party's complicity in allowing one man to pursue his own legacy skewed the foreign aid budget to the tune of about $3 billion.

On 19 October 2012 Australia secured what has been rightly described as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fill a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council. The coalition welcomed this outcome, and we paid tribute particularly to the very hard work of all the diplomatic officials and staff in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for making the opportunity a reality. The coalition also paid proper respect to and acknowledged the efforts of the former member for Griffith for setting such an aspirational goal. You would think that the uniqueness of the opportunity would have meant that the former Labor government had a well-developed plan and a well-developed strategy. But, regrettably, the briefing notes obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and prepared by DFAT for the incoming Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, revealed that this was not the case.

Minister Carr became Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade on 13 March 2012. The briefing notes for Minister Carr as the incoming Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade do include a specific reference to the UN Security Council campaign. In particular I note that, on page 18 of one of those briefing notes, DFAT referred to the commencement of the development of a strategy including objectives, priorities and resourcing. That is right—the commencement of the development of a strategy. You could be forgiven for wondering why there was not a strategy in place already when Minister Carr came in. Page 19 of the same briefing note makes reference to commencing development of a strategy for how Australia would use its membership and how we would resource our membership.

These statements support the view that the whole UN Security Council campaign was not well planned, not strategic in its development and very much done at the very last minute. This may well have been due to the fact that it was predicated on buying votes, as was demonstrated by the skewing of the foreign aid budget, which I and others highlighted to this House on many occasions. It is concerning from the information revealed in the briefing notes that even at a late stage—that is, at the time of the briefing which Minister Carr as the incoming Foreign Minister received in March last year—DFAT still did not know what the government's strategy was and how it would use its membership. This is not such a great example of how Australia could use its once-in-a-generation opportunity.

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