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| 1 |
ID:
147634
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| Summary/Abstract |
Peter Varghese AO, Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), refers to diplomacy as ‘the compass by which Australia makes its way in the world’. Its core task – to advance the nation’s security and prosperity – remains unchanged across decades.
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| 2 |
ID:
181936
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| Summary/Abstract |
In its 50 years, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs (and later Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) has become a great department of state. Foreign is an important conglomerate, doing diplomacy, trade, aid, and spying. In the Canberra system, though, Foreign has an ‘anaemia’ problem caused by chronic underfunding. Measured as a proportion of the Commonwealth budget, spending on diplomacy is halving in only three decades. Anaemia is the effect; the causes are a formidable set of forces pressing against the department over those 50 years: the evolution and empowerment of Australia’s presidential prime minister; the birth of ministerial minders; public service managerialism; Canberra’s national security system—and mindset—in the twenty-first century; globalisation and the digital era: every government department has its own bit of foreign policy; political choices: Australia’s two parties of government— Liberal and Labor—often buy something other than good foreign policy. Plus, important bits of the Liberal Party see DFAT as ideologically tainted.
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