Australia cut foreign aid oversight to save costs, new document reveals, as it ramps up Asia-Pacific outreach to counter China

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade last year closed two bodies monitoring its US$3 billion overseas aid programme, which has focused on the region as Beijing’s influence grows

While it said the bodies’ ‘core functions’ would continue, the document shows staff were cut and ‘strategic evaluations’ entirely removed, prompting criticism from aid groups and scholars

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Under Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia’s A$4 billion foreign aid programme has ramped up its focus on the Asia-Pacific amid unease over China’s growing influence in the region. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 7:00am, 4 Feb 2021Updated: 7:54pm, 4 Feb 2021

Australia last year scrapped two bodies overseeing the effectiveness of its overseas aid programmes due to cost concerns, new documents reveal, while officials cut staff and a key oversight role despite reassurances the bodies’ “core functions” would continue elsewhere.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) in September said it had closed the Office of Development Effectiveness (ODE), an independent arm tasked with monitoring the outcomes of Australia’s A$4 billion (US$3.06 billion) overseas aid programme, which has ramped up its focus on the Asia-Pacific amid unease over China’s growing influence in the region.

While aid groups and analysts at the time criticised the move as shortsighted, DFAT downplayed the changes as a “slightly refreshed approach to monitoring and evaluation” following the reallocation of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding towards pandemic recovery efforts in the Asia-Pacific.

Appearing before a parliamentary inquiry into the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, DFAT acting deputy secretary Kathy Klugman in September said the ODE’s “core functions” would continue to be performed by other areas of the department, including the Office of the Chief Economist, and its “people and the expertise still exist”.

“I can absolutely assure you that robust monitoring and evaluation of our development programme is still a top priority for this department,” Klugman said.

But a DFAT minute obtained exclusively by This Week in Asia reveals the department had in early August decided to cut the ODE’s staff from 13.5 full-time employees to five, and do away entirely with the office’s role of carrying out “strategic evaluations”, one of its three key functions.

The DFAT minute obtained under freedom of information laws.