{"id":19005,"date":"2015-03-16T06:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-03-15T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=19005"},"modified":"2015-03-16T19:29:49","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T08:29:49","slug":"tasting-the-new-dfat-omelette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/tasting-the-new-dfat-omelette\/","title":{"rendered":"Tasting the new DFAT omelette"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Labor<\/a><\/p>\n

Some costs and benefits of Australia\u2019s Foreign Affairs revolution are clear.<\/p>\n

The revolution was DFAT swallowing AusAID<\/a> (Pre-FAT eats WasAID, in Casey Building argot), crunching together diplomatic pinstripes and aidies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A benefit for the Abbott government is that the noise of the integration was a scrap of cover for the final slaying of the golden aid consensus. So ended an unusual era when large injections of dollars pumped up Oz aid and AusAID. Reversing the gold flow to aid contributed $11 billion to budget forward estimates<\/a>, giving Oz a world ranking<\/a> for aid trashing. Polls show that taking 20% of the savings out of the one percent of the budget going to aid didn\u2019t disturb voters<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those benefits\u2014budget boost and little public cost\u2014go to the government, not DFAT, as an institution. But what of the costs?<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s capacity to work in the development field has been greatly reduced.\u00a0The development world is a complex one, full of specialised knowledge, experience, agencies and skills. Global development is an industry with its own language, literature and institutions.\u00a0With AusAID, Australia had an identifiable government agency able to play in that world. This capacity has not been lost, but its bureaucratic standing has been reduced and value downgraded.<\/p>\n

The disappearance of AusAID\u2014and to a degree, the disappearance of Australia’s aid program inside DFAT\u2014will not rate as an issue for countries in the developing world.\u00a0 Papua New Guinea and the Islands can still expect Australia to perform normal service as the largest donor in the South Pacific. Capitals such as Jakarta and Hanoi will view the change as Australia’s business.<\/p>\n

As Tony Abbott has just discovered<\/a> with Indonesia, extracting direct influence or explicit diplomatic return from aid is problematic. Indeed, the government\u2019s integration of AusAID<\/a> to enable the \u2018aid and diplomatic arms of Australia\u2019s international policy agenda to be more closely aligned\u2019 is an expression of how difficult it is to identify explicit relationship benefits flowing from aid generosity. Jakarta has just endorsed Abbott\u2019s integration\/alignment argument by showing that a billion dollars of post-tsunami help doesn\u2019t generate much leverage or linkage on other issues.<\/p>\n

Has the change damaged Australia?\u00a0 Has Australia’s capacity to engage effectively with developing countries in our region been reduced?\u00a0 The truth of the matter (whisper it) is that Australian aid has always been designed to advance Australia’s interests.\u00a0 Humanitarianism hasn\u2019t been absent from the Australian aid program, but it\u2019s never been the dominant part.<\/p>\n

Australia’s ability to use \u2018aid diplomacy\u2019 has\u00a0been damaged.\u00a0 Good aid makes a difference and does help development. Emphasise the word \u2018good\u2019; it has to be well-designed and delivered to get respect from other governments and bureaucracies. To design, deliver and maintain a program is hard. Very hard.\u00a0It was AusAID\u2019s number one priority. It\u2019s not DFAT\u2019s. Still, aid will continue to be a significant element in the country-to-country game known as \u2018the relationship\u2019, the diplomatic construct monitoring the bilateral business in all its temperatures\u2014from famously to friendly to febrile to flaming.<\/p>\n

Governments are elected to choose and the Abbott government has certainly delivered a decision. AusAID had grown too quickly, which happens during gold rushes. Aid strategy was not particularly well-managed during the Rudd-Gillard period, although the \u2018dysfunction\u2019 cry was common across much of the bureaucracy. Putting down an institution certainly ranks as a decisive response to whatever problems there were.<\/p>\n

The ultimate Canberra judgement on integration will arrive with the next change of government. If Labor does not unscramble the omelette, the new structure will be the new norm. In the same way, Labor\u2019s marriage of Trade and Foreign in 1987 was not entrenched as the Canberra consensus until a Liberal-National Coalition government regained office. In 1996, the National Party leader, Tim Fischer, took the Trade portfolio, as tradition demanded, but did not seek a bureaucratic divorce to break-up DFAT<\/a>, marking a distinct shift in the wombat tribe\u2019s McEwenist Trade heritage<\/a>. In 2013, Tony Abbott completed this process by giving Trade to a Liberal, not a wombat, breaking seven decades of Coalition law\/lore.<\/p>\n

In Opposition, Labor has been feeling the aid industry\u2019s pain but making no promise about AusAID\u2019s resurrection. Labor laments \u2018the destruction of the bipartisan approach to aid\u2019 and claims the Abbott government \u2018has made Australian aid less efficient and less effective\u2019. Yet Labor says when it returns to office \u2018it will not be a simple matter of pressing the restart button\u2019.<\/p>\n

The no \u2018restart\u2019 line means that the big aid speech<\/a> by Labor\u2019s deputy leader and Foreign Affairs shadow, Tanya Plibersek, contained\u00a0no promise to unscramble the DFAT omelette.<\/p>\n

Graeme Dobell<\/a> is the ASPI journalist fellow. Image courtesy of Flickr user Christian Kadluba<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some costs and benefits of Australia\u2019s Foreign Affairs revolution are clear. The revolution was DFAT swallowing AusAID (Pre-FAT eats WasAID, in Casey Building argot), crunching together diplomatic pinstripes and aidies. A benefit for the Abbott …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":19006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[832,45,89,294,132],"class_list":["post-19005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-aid","tag-ausaid","tag-dfat","tag-diplomacy","tag-tony-abbott"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTasting the new DFAT omelette | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/tasting-the-new-dfat-omelette\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tasting the new DFAT omelette | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Some costs and benefits of Australia\u2019s Foreign Affairs revolution are clear. 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