Source: Australia Government Statements 2
I’d like to begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people as traditional custodians of the Canberra region, and pay my respects to elders past and present. I would also like to acknowledge and welcome other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who may be attending today’s events.
Thank you for having me here.
It’s a pleasure to join you to celebrate sixty years of ACFID, and six decades of extraordinary contribution by Australia’s development and humanitarian community.
I want to thank the ACFID team for your work bringing the nation’s international development organisations together – Organisations that work to improve the lives and livelihoods of our neighbours, of those in our region and beyond.
Our partnerships with you all – Australia’s international NGOs – exemplify Australian generosity but are also integral to our national interest.
Ultimately, partnership with you helps us all shape a peaceful, stable and prosperous region.
I’m very happy to have this chance to be with you today.
Now, while the international development portfolio now sits with Minister Aly, I remain deeply committed to this agenda… not least because it’s still so relevant to my work in the Pacific portfolio.
I remain very proud of what we’ve achieved together since we were elected in 2022.
Our view was that we needed a comprehensive reset in our approach.
We needed to grapple with the changing global landscape.
And we needed an approach that would put genuine partnership, transparency and local leadership at the heart of our interactions with our development partners.
The 2023 International Development Policy marked a reset – and was backed by $1.7 billion in new funding, and anchored in the principles of partnership, local leadership and transparency.
It was the first new International Development Policy in a decade.
Since the policy was launched two years ago we have made good progress.
We’ve published country and regional Development Partnership Plans and launched the AusDevPortal.
We’ve also published three thematic strategies: the Humanitarian Policy; the Disability Equality and Rights Strategy; and the International Gender Equality Strategy.
I’d like to take a quick chance to run through some of the priority challenges we collectively face in our work since this session is focused on partnership.
For the Pacific, climate change is not a future issue; it an existential one.
Australia’s Falepili Union with Tuvalu is a world-first treaty – supporting sovereignty and people’s security in the face of rising seas.
Likewise, our joint bid with Pacific to co-host COP 31 shows we’re not just talking about climate action – we want to lead with the region.
We’re backing climate finance the Pacific has asked for: the Pacific Resilience Facility, the Loss and Damage Fund, and the Green Climate Fund.
We have introduced ambitious new climate investment targets, under which at least 50 per cent of our ODA investments above $3 million must have climate objectives.
ACFID members, as our partners, are at the forefront of supporting the region in action against climate change.
From local action to embed community and traditional knowledge into climate adaptation, through to helping communities and countries navigate innovative development finance and global multilateral climate fund access, you are there.
And speaking of innovative finance, just this week, we had the first call for proposals under the Indo-Pacific NGO Blended Finance Accelerator – supporting NGOs to scope and develop high impact blended finance vehicles across the Indo-Pacific.
This was something I was really proud to announce last term – and it’s great to see it progressing.
The accelerator is equipping NGOs with the tools they need to lead and innovate – bringing ingenuity and commitment to some of our region’s biggest development challenges.
We’re also working with partners, including many NGOs represented in the room today, to advance human development outcomes right across the region.
From delivery of education, to reducing health risks, responding effectively to emergencies, elevating and strengthening sexual and reproductive health and rights, your work has, and will remain, critical to improving the lives of countless communities and individuals around the world.
That is development in action.
Practical, mutual and enduring.
Just to turn a little more to my portfolio of the Pacific, our goal is to be the partner of choice for the Pacific – not by default, but by design.
A partner that listens, delivers and stays the course.
We welcome all who come to our region with respect, transparency and long-term commitment.
What matters is that Pacific priorities drive Pacific outcomes.
Because when the Pacific is stronger, Australia is stronger.
NGOs play a vital role in supporting this regional development.
Through ACFID, NGOs and civil society actors, and others including Australia’s volunteers and our networks of Australian and regional Alumni through our scholarship programs – we are building deep people-to-people links between Australia and our region.
The work of your organisations, and the local organisations many of you partner with – you are reaching, changing and saving millions of lives each year.
Anniversaries like ACFID’s are a chance not simply to look back – but to look forward.
When our Government came to office, I mapped out Labor’s vision for an international development program grounded in values of fairness, equality and compassion.
Consideration of our partnership with you, and the role of civil society in promoting equality, access to services and opportunities has hugely informed every step of our policy development and program roll out.
People in this room had direct input and influence over the international development policy I launched with the Foreign Minister in 2023.
You have also worked with the Department on every single strategy, policy and Development Partnership Plan that has come out since.
And our partnership is also expanding directly through programs too.
This includes getting the Civil Society Partnership Fund up and running to ensure that your counterpart organisations around the world are supported to defend a shrinking civic space.
And I’m particularly pleased to say this also includes establishing the new Partnerships for Decent Work in the Indo-Pacific program.
It’s great to have APHEDA in the room with us today. I acknowledge their long-standing expertise in supporting union movements around the world. Not only will this program deliver solid development outcomes by supporting decent work and decent pay; but unions are critical defenders of civic space.
The push back against civic space in our region is very, very real as you all well know.
And the best way for the Australian Government to respond to this is to partner with you in this room, and your counterpart organisations.
We see this playing out in real time, right now:
- Eroding the rights of women and girls.
- Diminishing access to reproductive and sexual health services.
- A push back on workers’ rights.
- Too many instances of ignoring, at best, the rights of people with disabilities.
- Communities and individuals not being able to participate in civic life.
In a time when the rules-based order is under pressure, when human rights are being squeezed, when the basic needs of people can’t be met, the international development program is one of the clearest ways Australia shows up, with respect, transparency and cooperation.
So to draw this together, I return to what I said just earlier: an anniversary like ACFID’s 60th is a chance to look forward.
Where do we go from here?
Well, in the immediate future we need to bed down and lock in the new activities we are working on with you.
I want these to be successful and sustainable.
And I want these to become just as embedded in the partnership between the Government and NGOs as ANCP is.
But beyond the programs I’ve discussed, one thing above all is clear:
That despite all of the incredible change the world has seen in the last 10 years (let alone the 60 years since ACFID was founded), the need for a strong development program and the need for active NGOs is greater than ever.
The future is undoubtedly littered with challenges.
Everything I have discussed will persist:
- Climate change action.
- Intensifying humanitarian needs.
- Protecting rights.
Ensuring women and girls have opportunities equal to the men and boys around them.
Ensuring a voice for the vulnerable.
And the only way we can achieve sustainable progress on any of these will be through enduring partnerships where we all work together with a singularity of purpose.
Conclusion
So to ACFID and its members: congratulations on sixty years of service, advocacy and partnership.
You embody the best of Australia – our generosity, our ingenuity and our belief that our region’s success is our own.
As we look ahead, it’s important that we keep working together – government, civil society and community – to build a region that is peaceful, prosperous and resilient.
Here’s to the next 60 years of ACFID, and to working together in true and lasting partnership.