ABOUT 6 million Australians will travel overseas this year, each one happily expecting consular support should they find themselves on the wrong side of the bars in a foreign prison. This support, however, is being threatened by the systematic gutting and downgrading of the diplomatic service as budgets and staff are cut.
Almost 50 per cent of Australians hold passports, and departures for overseas have doubled in the past 10 years.
The expectation of these travellers of being served by an adequately resourced diplomatic service, however, rests on a seismic fault line of government failure as revealed in Australia's Diplomatic Deficit, a report prepared by the Lowy Institute for International Policy chaired by Allan Gyngell, a former senior diplomat and high-ranking public servant.
As the report underlines, our diplomatic network is a joke when compared with other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, our total of 91 missions comparing with an average of 150. Only four OECD countries - Ireland, Luxembourg, the Slovak Republic and New Zealand - operate fewer posts.
Of these 91 missions, 40 per cent have three or fewer Australian-based staff, the number of small posts having risen from 22 to 37 since 2000. As the report says: "Once extensive departmental reporting processes and staff leave are taken into account, in practice small posts lack the resources to do much more than raise the flag and administer themselves."
These largely ineffectual small posts make up 59 per cent of our presence in Europe, 30 per cent in the all-important Asia-Pacific region and 45 per cent in the Americas.
It may be called the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade but the foreign experience of the majority of its staff is confined to dining in ethnic restaurants in Canberra. Australian-based staff serving overseas has dropped by 25 per cent since 1996.
Only 517 are serving overseas compared with 1611 occupying desks in Canberra or offices in other Australian states.
By comparison, more than 60 per cent of Japan's and 42 per cent of the United Kingdom's diplomatic staff work overseas.
While the former foreign minister Alexander Downing was running up massive bills on tours of the world's great hotels, the real operating budget of DFAT and its staffing levels were falling.
As the Lowy report points out, if you exclude those employed in issuing passports, DFAT staff levels have fallen by 20 per cent since 1996.
In that same time, the number of Federal Police grew by 151 per cent and ASIO's staff level jumped by 139 per cent.
DFAT's inflation-adjusted budget has been in steady decline since 2000 and the Rudd Government, despite the Prime Minister's fondness for lecturing the world from the international stage, has announced it will cut an additional $124 million between now and 2012.
So far, this has led to the axing of 25 overseas positions with another 25 expected to be cut.
Despite this, the PM has spent significant sums sending Tim Fischer, a deputy prime minister in the Howard government, to be resident Australian Ambassador to the Vatican.
As National Party senator and deputy chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee Russell Trood says: "The decision in relation to the Holy See hardly makes any sense. It drains limited resources from DFAT's budget and will do little to advance our national interest abroad."
Foreign language abilities, handy skills to have you would think when working as a diplomat, are also lacking.
According to the report, 74 per cent of Australian-based DFAT staff are not professionally or highly proficient in any foreign language. This is hardly surprising given that in 1995-96, the department was spending $2.16 million in language training while 10 years later it was spending $2.19 million.
This decay and stagnation has taken place in a climate of soaring demand from Australian citizens for DFAT services, the number of consular cases attended to by diplomats having risen from 57,706 in 1996-97 to 184,992 in 2007-08.
As the report says: "Australians are increasingly able to travel to risky destinations. But their expectations of the Australian Government when travelling overseas far exceed its capacity to provide assistance.
"The number of missing persons, hospital admissions, deaths overseas and arrests have risen overall in the past decade."
Controlling unflattering media exposure, says the report, as occurred recently in the Lapthorne case in Dubrovnik, has become a DFAT focus which soaks up scarce resources.
"For missions dealing with a growing workload with reduced staff, crisis management - including high-profile consular cases - increasingly sets priorities. In these circumstances, damage control becomes the norm," the report says.
In a national security statement released last December, the Prime Minister said: "Given the vast continent we occupy, the small population we have and our unique geographic circumstances, our diplomacy must be the best in the world." It is an assertion which is sounding increasingly hollow.
Source: Courier Mail