Australia and Africa by Nikola Pijović

Author:Nikola Pijović
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789811334238
Publisher: Springer Singapore

JSCFADT’s ‘Inquiry into Australia’s Relationship with the Countries of Africa’

At this time of Australia’s growing interest in furthering foreign policy engagement with Africa, and with the support of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith , on 30 October 2009, the Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade (JSCFADT) officially launched an Inquiry into Australia’s Relationship with the Countries of Africa (Foreshaw 2013, 53–54). Although there had been several previous inquiries into various Africa-related issues, JSCFADT had never prior to 2009 held an inquiry into Australia’s relations with African countries continent-wide.22 The inquiry provided further parliamentary ‘publicity’ and interest in Australia’s engagement with Africa which was welcomed by the Labor government as it ‘was consistent with the government’s increased focus on Africa’ (Foreshaw 2013, 53). This inquiry and its recommendations provided the government with further strength in justifying its policy of ‘broadening’ and ‘deepening’ engagement with Africa, as it could argue that this was not just a Labor Party policy, but one also receiving bipartisan support from the Parliament.

An argument favouring the view that furthering engagement with Africa was a foreign policy that the Labor government would have pursued on its own merits, and not only for the purposes of securing membership of the UNSC in 2012 was expressed by the Chairman of the JSCFADT , Senator Michael Forshaw. Foreshaw was at pains to point out that despite the conservative oppositions ‘assertions and attempts at political point scoring’, his government’s refocus on Africa and the JSCFADT inquiry was not motivated by Labor’s campaign ‘to be elected to the UN Security Council’. Foreshaw argued that he ‘raised the proposal for an inquiry into our relations with Africa’ when he became chair of the JSCFADT in February 2008, a month prior to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd ’s announcement that Australia would run for a seat at the UNSC , and that it was ‘clearly in Australia’s economic and political interests to increase our engagement with the African continent’ (Forshaw 2013, 57).

The Committee presented its report in June 2011 and offered 17 recommendations (JSCFADT 2011). It is not necessary to expand on all of them, but will suffice to say that while the government supported or agreed with all of them in principle, two were never acted upon. Recommendation 10 which advised that the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations help fund a Centre for African Studies was not taken up by the government due to lack of funds in that department, and in the same way, recommendation 16 which advised that DFAT fund an Africa-Australia Council was also rejected for a lack of departmental funds (Australian Government 2012). Since Labor’s own 2007 Constitution and National Platform—its main pre-election policy document—argued that when in government, it would establish an Africa-Australia Council (ALP 2007, 236), its failure to do so when in government does strengthen the argument that its ‘new engagement ’ with Africa was mostly for the purposes of its UNSC membership bid. The government easily

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