After CIDA, AusAID: Australia 'integrates' aid into foreign affairs

Just a few months after Canada confirmed its development agency would be absorbed into the country’s foreign affairs and trade ministry, now Australia will follow suit. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced on Wednesday that the foreign aid portfolio would be “integrated” into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade under Julie Bishop to be “more closely aligned” with foreign policy and to cut “duplication and waste.” The decision prompted — according to local media — the resignation of AusAID chief Peter Baxter, who will be replaced by his deputy Ewan McDonald as acting director general. Both the agency and DFAT declined to comment. NGOs like ActionAid and Oxfam immediately blasted the announcement. ActionAid Australia executive director Archie Law called the move “rash” and “shortsighted”, and predicted it will have “massive and devastating effects on Australia’s aid program and on the people living in poverty that the program supports.” “With AusAID reporting to DFAT, we will inevitably see the aid budget used to promote Australia’s national interests first and foremost. Aid programs that don’t contribute to Australia’s interests will be the first to go, and we are extremely concerned about what this will mean for the most marginalised communities in some of the world’s poorest countries,” he said in a statement. Law also raised a concern shared by many opponents of the CIDA merger in Canada — that AusAID will now be subject to national economic and political interests instead of its mandate to fight poverty. READ: The tug of war over CIDA reform Oxfam Australia CEO Helen Szoke noted in a statement that the priority now is that the country’s foreign aid programs continue to focus on reducing poverty, “no matter where this work is located within the government machinery.” Sought for comment, a spokesperson from the Australian Council for International Development told Devex it’s not clear yet what the integration of AusAID into DFAT will actually imply. The spokesperson mentioned how just three years ago, the agency was part of the department until July 2010, when it became an executive agency and started reporting directly to the minister. “Maybe this just going back to the old model… Let’s wait and see,” said the ACFID spokesperson. Lean Santos contributed reporting Read more development aid news online, and subscribe to The Development Newswire to receive top international development headlines from the world’s leading donors, news sources and opinion leaders — emailed to you FREE every business day.