The former Howard government has been criticised from within its own ranks for not putting enough money into Foreign Affairs. Liberal Senator Russell Trood said yesterday the Labor government's recently announced cut of $57 million from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade would worsen the situation. He will tell today's Estimates hearings the ''double whammy'' of cutbacks meant Australia could be missing out on important political intelligence from the world's trouble spots. ''If you slowly chip away at the sources of information you have, then you have a narrower range of intelligence and then the intelligence assessments are weaker than they should otherwise be,'' he said. ''DIO [Defence Intelligence
Organisation] for example, relies very heavily for some of its intelligence on the kinds of reports that come back from our missions overseas.

''We need to maintain the integrity of that intelligence.'' Senator Trood is deputy chairman of the Senate committee that will conduct the Estimates hearing today into DFAT. In January Prime Minister Kevin Rudd slashed $57 million from the budget of DFAT, his former employer, and withdrew 19 overseas diplomatic positions. The cuts include taking two positions from the team negotiating a free trade agreement with China and axing an entire program to promote Australian cultural exports. Senator Trood said DFAT's budget had risen by 18 per cent over the past five years, while ASIO received a 539 per cent boost. "Regrettably, during the course of the Howard government, I think we underfunded DFAT,'' he said. Labor's policies on DFAT were inconsistent, he added.

Source: Canberra Times