Lowy Institute urges a major overhaul of Australia’s diplomatic network

The Lowy Institute for International Policy in Australia released a report in March 2009, which was the first major public review of Australia’s diplomatic network in over 20 years.

To conduct the review, Allan Gyngell, the Institute’s executive director, invited five other eminent independent experts from diverse backgrounds in government, business and academia to join him on a panel* to examine Australia’s international policy infrastructure.

In a first for an Australian foreign policy think tank, the panel’s task was to develop as comprehensive picture as possible of Australia’s instruments of foreign policy, and determine their fitness to deal with the complex policy issues confronting government in the 21st century. Their report, “Australia’s Diplomatic Deficit – reinvesting in our instruments of international policy”, took nine months to complete, with Lowy Institute researchers supporting the panel in investigation, research and drafting.

The report’s findings highlighted a dramatic deficit in Australia’s international policy infrastructure, surprising even the panel members, who found that Australia’s diplomatic network is overstretched, hollowed-out and ill-equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

More generally, the report argued that Australia’s foreign policy instruments (the diplomatic network, foreign policy agencies such as AusAID and Austrade, and other government departments and agencies involved in international policy making) are failing to keep pace with globalisation and the communications revolution – these are forces which are driving the emergence of new regional and world powers, and shifting the centre of economic power further towards our region.

In the panel’s view, Australian policy-making machinery is not harnessing the power of other influential international actors such as NGOs and multinational corporations. Nor is it equipped to meet the complex challenges posed by the “wicked problems” of terrorism, climate change, food and energy security, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In a context where the Australian government has bold international ambitions such as seeking a seat on the UN Security Council and reinvigorating nuclear non-proliferation negotiations, the nation’s international policy machinery needs urgent attention.

Yet the report found that rather than meeting these challenges with a well-resourced diplomatic network, Australia had fewer diplomatic missions than all OECD nations except Ireland, Luxembourg, the Slovak Republic and New Zealand. For a nation with the 15th largest economy in the world, the 12th largest defence budget and 13th largest aid budget (and growing), its foreign policy capability is seriously deficient:

• The true operating budget of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has been declining for at least a decade, as have its staff numbers
• Australia is under-represented in regions of growing importance to our interests, including -India, China, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America
• Australia has a disproportionate and growing number of “very small” overseas posts (currently 40% of our posts are operated by three or fewer home-based staff)
• Australia’s consular corps is beleaguered by the competing challenges of a near- tripling of the consular case workload in the last decade (with increasing numbers of international travellers and consular crises), soaring expectations of consular assistance on the part of the travelling public, and a depleted overseas workforce
• DFAT’s policy capability has been eroded, its approach to public diplomacy is outmoded and underfunded, and core diplomatic language and specialist skills have deteriorated
• International policy-making is devolving to departments and agencies other than DFAT, raising problems of coordination, leadership and policy coherence.

Other developed nations (such as the United Kingdom, United States, Denmark and the Netherlands) are attempting to meet the modern challenges in international policy by investing in their overseas networks, and re-energising and re-organising their ministries of foreign affairs. They are more sophisticated in their approach to public diplomacy and engaging more with stakeholders such as NGOs and business.

Even the US, the world’s major military power, is re-examining the (im)balance between its spending on security compared with diplomacy. As Defence Secretary Robert Gates said last year in a speech to the US Global Leadership Campaign:

“It has become clear that America’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long – relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world…the budgets we are talking about are relatively small compared to the rest of government, a steep increase of these capabilities is well within reach – as long as there is the political will and wisdom to do it.”

The Lowy Institute report recommends a major overhaul of, and reinvestment in, Australia’s diplomatic network including:

• Opening 20 new diplomatic missions over the next 10 years
• A major investment in new staff and in language and other specialist skills
• A major investment in new media such as blogs and Wikis, and a reorientation of cultural diplomacy away from elite audiences towards key target audiences such as youth, potential leaders and Islamic communities
• Revamping consular services and encouraging registration and insurance for Australian travellers.

Alex Duchen is a Research Associate at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney

*The Lowy panel included Jillian Broadbent, a member of the Reserve Bank Board, Professor William Maley AM of the ANU’s Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Brad Orgill, former CEO and Chair or UBS Australia, Professor Peter Shergold AC, former Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Ric Smith AO PSM, former Secretary of the Department of Defence, and Allan Gyngell, the Executive Director of the Lowy Institute.

The panel was supported by a research team coordinated by the Lowy Institute Director of Studies, Andrew Shearer, with the assistance of research associates Fergus Hanson and Alex Duchen.