The documents show USAID was “holding funds” paid by Australia for two separate aid projects.<\/p>\n
Australia weighs boosting foreign aid<\/a><\/p>\n Australia’s foreign policy priorities include our strategic position in the Pacific, expanding economic ties with South-East Asia and broadening ties with regional powers like India and Japan.<\/p>\n A total of $1.5 million given to USAID to help deliver a clean drinking water project in Indonesia was returned to DFAT on June 12 this year.<\/p>\n Details of the other project were redacted from the documents obtained by the ABC due to including “material in the nature of opinions and recommendations in relation to the department’s deliberative processes”, DFAT said.<\/p>\n Former World Vision Australia CEO Reverend Tim Costello said he was “so glad that Australian taxpayers’ money came back” but said the situation had been a close call for DFAT.<\/p>\n “[Donald] Trump and [Elon] Musk destroyed USAID and it is going to cost 15 million lives by 2030<\/a>. Having Australian taxpayers’ dollars lost in that would have been an insult to injury,” he said.<\/p>\n Australia has partnered with USAID on several occasions since an MoU was signed in 2019. (Australian Embassy in the US\/Flickr)<\/p>\n The ABC’s FOI request to DFAT specifically asked for: “All documents relating to the transfer of DFAT funds to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).”<\/p>\n ‘Sobering lesson’ for DFAT<\/p>\n The Indonesia water project was set up as a Delegated Cooperation Arrangement, DFAT said.<\/p>\n These arrangements allow governments “to delegate support to another donor partner”, while “the lead donor holds the contractual relationship with the implementing partner for the program, and funds them directly”, DFAT added.<\/p>\n In this Indonesia project, Australia contributed more money but USAID took the lead on the ground, the FOI documents show.<\/p>\n DFAT told the ABC that such arrangements were “common practice”.<\/p>\n But Rev Costello said he wasn’t aware that direct funding being made to USAID was common practice.<\/p>\n “I was surprised by that,” he said, but added “there is a lot of cooperation between them [DFAT and USAID]”.<\/p>\n Former CEO of World Vision Australia, Tim Costello. (ABC News: Scott Jewell)<\/p>\n “I didn’t know that we directly funded USAID but I assume it’s joint projects and I know that the humanitarian sector see many donor governments working in cooperation,” he added.<\/p>\n Rev Costello said it would have been a “sobering lesson” for DFAT to have to ask for the money to be returned.<\/p>\n Research Associate at the Lowy Institute’s Indo-Pacific Development Centre, Grace Stanhope, said financial cooperation with other bilateral government agencies was “really quite rare”.<\/p>\n “I suspect we do cooperate fairly often with the US but it just happens through a third-party,” she added.<\/p>\n Ms Stanhope said $1.5m was a small amount of money in the context of Australia’s total aid spending.<\/p>\n But she said it was important it was returned.<\/p>\n “It doesn’t matter how small the amount is, it is still a proportion of Australian taxpayer funds,” she added.Do you know more?<\/p>\n Contact Lewis Wiseman at wiseman.lewis@abc.net.au<\/a> if you have any information about this topic in Australia.<\/p>\n What was the Indonesia project?<\/p>\n DFAT acted as co-donor for the Indonesia Urban Resilient Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Activity, which was also known as IUWASH Tangguh.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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