Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Foreign policy is a major weakness for the Abbott government. In fact, Australia has become an embarrassment, routinely being criticised by leaders of other nations about our foreign aid cuts, our approach to climate change and our relations within our region. Only today we see on the front page of The Australian newspaper the Indonesian foreign minister actively criticising specifically this foreign minister for the comments made yesterday in respect of allegations of people smugglers being paid. This foreign minister has allowed $11.3 billion to walk out of the aid budget over the last three years. Without a doubt, this is the worst performance by a foreign minister in our nation's history when it comes to promoting overseas development aid.

In 2013-14, from MYEFO and the budget, $7.6 billion was cut from the aid budget. But that was not enough. In the next year the foreign minister allowed a further $3.7 billion to be cut from the aid budget—in total, $11.3 billion. What was the minister's response? The minister's response during the Treasurer's condolence motion on former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was to roll her eyes. That was it—she rolled her eyes. The Australian people need more than that. They need more than eye rolling. My first question to the foreign minister is: when the Expenditure Review Committee were cutting the $7.6 billion from the aid budget in 2013-14 and again in 2014 when they were cutting $3.7 billion, did the minister object to those aid cuts? The minister says that they want to increase the diplomatic footprint of the Australian government, despite the fact that the minister has allowed 549 jobs to be cut from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. By 2016 Australia will spend just 22c in every $100 of national income on development aid, the lowest that it has ever been in our nation's history, and it will fall further under this government to 17c per $100 of national income.

This foreign minister has said that cuts to aid will not affect the Asia-Pacific region, but we see in the details of the budget papers that the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar will have their aid budgets cut by 40 per cent. The minister has given a guarantee that there would not be any cuts to the Pacific—our own neighbourhood, our own region—yet we find in the details of this year's budget papers that there will be a cut to the Pacific region of $55 million. The government claim that they are all about transparency. Where is the transparency? It was up to the individual aid organisations to discover these cuts themselves. On several occasions the opposition, the aid organisations, the NGOs, have been asking: where are the cuts going to come from on the ground? The minister and the government refuse to answer, and we now see that the government is abandoning the notion of a blue book providing details of where these cuts would come from.

The minister has spoken about expanding the diplomatic footprint of Australia, and she has spoken of opening new posts. That is something that the opposition supports. But the incompetence of this minister in this government is perfectly demonstrated by the manner in which the government went about announcing the opening of a new post in Buka in Papua New Guinea: the foreign minister and the government forgot to properly tell the Papua New Guinean government about this change. And what was the response of the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea? He said:

We were shocked to learn from the budget documents that Australia was planning to establish a diplomatic post in Bougainville. There has been no consultation on this proposal and there is no agreement to proceed.

This was confirmed by the secretary of the department during estimates a couple of weeks ago, when Mr Varghese said in response to a question from Senator Wong:

If we had our time over again, Senator Wong, I think we would have done this differently.

That is the view of the head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade about the approach that this minister and the government took to announcing the opening of a new post in Papua New Guinea—one of our most important regional neighbours. My final question to the minister is: can the minister explain how she managed to embarrass Australia and cause offence to Papua New Guinea through the budget announcement of a new post in Buka in Papua New Guinea?

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