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

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has a proud history, going back to its creation in 1935 as the Department of External Affairs. Originally it was a tiny department with half a dozen officers. It grew in size and importance as Australia adopted a more independent foreign policy, a foreign policy that expressed Australian values and Australian interests rather than being just an offset of British foreign policy.

That role is just as important as ever, but the government's cuts to the Department of Foreign Affairs put its roles and its performance at risk—cuts, of course, that have come despite commitments before the election not to cut. The coalition said in its foreign affairs policy statement before the election that it would:

… implement a review of diplomatic resources and consider options ... to ensure Australia's global diplomatic network is consistent with our interests.

Well, it seems from this budget that what is 'consistent with our interests' is a $400 million cut over four years to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade budget. This year, that means reducing staff numbers by 500 people—one in eight of all DFAT staff. With an operating budget of $1.3 billion a year, that is a cut of eight per cent a year, every year, for four years.

Soon after the election the foreign minister said that she would fight for more funding for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. She told AAP in October:

Over time, I have a plan to expand our diplomatic footprint overseas and that will in some instances require new money ... Sometimes you have to spend more money to make more money.

Of course, there has been no sign of a truly expanded footprint, and instead of more money we are seeing dramatically less.

In Senate estimates we learned that the government is undertaking a 'footprint review'. The most likely outcome will of course be a smaller diplomatic footprint to reflect the smaller resources of the department. The department's Secretary, Peter Varghese, told estimates that in aid 'we will be doing less in Africa, which means the footprint we have in Africa on the development cooperation side is going to be different to what it was I2 months ago'. And I think 'different' means smaller in this case. We also learned in Senate estimates that the embassy in Baghdad will be merged with the British embassy and that the department is looking at further mergers of embassies in other places. In May, many DFAT workers were told that the department would reduce staff numbers at foreign posts by 65, out of 800 in total serving overseas. And of course there are cuts to the aid budget, which I have spoken about many times here.

Before the election, the coalition said there would be no cuts to the ABC. And in another broken promise we see that instead the government has abolished the Australia Network, a key instrument in Australia's soft-power diplomacy—the main tool for spreading the message about all aspects of Australia throughout our region.

The foreign minister probably thought that by combining AusAID with DFAT she could transfer some of the backroom costs and share them and protect DFAT from spending reductions. Instead, she has presided over massive cuts to AusAID and massive cuts to the Department of Foreign Affairs. In Canberra, responsibility for much aid policy and many aid projects has been transferred to Foreign Affairs staff who have little experience in the aid part of the work. Shifting foreign policy experts to aid tasks they are not trained for adds to the complexity of the aid work and also means that good foreign policy work that should be being done by those experienced foreign policy staff is not being done.

Staff morale has been very badly affected by the merger of AusAID with DFAT. Morale is especially low among former AusAID staff, who regard it as a hostile takeover. A staff survey conducted after the merger shows that just 33 per cent of former AusAID staff feel part of the team, compared with 70 per cent of longstanding DFAT staff. And the proportion who rate DFAT as a good place to work has slumped to 57 per cent, down from 70 per cent as recently as 2012.

So far, it seems that the merger will degrade the capability of both DFAT and AusAID, both parts of the new department, and it means that DFAT—the backbone of our foreign policy, trade and aid—is in a sorry state and getting worse.