Comments

Peter - thanks for articulating so clearly how many of us still working for AusAID feel. Despite it's imperfection and flaws, there was more than one black arm bands being worn on Thursday. As you so beautifully point out, it wasn't for the passing of an organisation but for the passing of an idea.

A beautiful commentary. Ive only known AUSAid from afar but it grieves me to see another organisation swallowed up by mindless short term processes. This is happening in so many places. I understand generational change but I am uneasy about the replacing logics - and how they are used t support thinly veiled vendettas. Why is good sense and sophisticated pragmatism now on the nose?

Thanks, Robin, for speaking so eloquently and perceptively for so many of us. In recent weeks and days I've been struck by just how intensely I have felt the impact of these events. Like so many members of the 'second wave', I left AusAID to pursue broader career opportunities in development. But given the defining place of the institution in the Australian aid scene, I never left its orbit. One way or another - directly or indirectly - I have always worked for AusAID. The broader community of Australian aid practitioners is indelibly linked to the Agency, and what it stood for. Of course, I left for reasons, as did many others. As your piece acknowledges, AusAID/AIDAB/ADAB/ADAA has always had its shortcomings. And all of us know just how much we complained about it - at times deeply and bitterly. Get two aid workers together and you could almost guarantee that the subject would soon turn to AusAID bashing. But, paradoxically, it is just that antagonism that highlights exactly what is being lost here, and why we feel it so deeply: AusAID was as much an idea as an organisation. It was the idea that we worked for; the organisation merely gave the idea a name, and a home. And it gave those of us who believe in the idea a home, too. Not to put too fine a point on it: at times we hated AusAID because we loved it so much. It was a place that linked our personal ideals and aspirations to those of the nation, and the world. AusAID, for all its flaws, was the public institution that gave a home for those of us who suffered under the ineradicable delusion that wanting to be a good global citizen was consistent with a proper career, and the equally persistent folly that a career in development was a means to try to manifest our better selves. So, you can take the boy out of AusAID, but you can't take AusAID out of the boy. And I hope and believe that the idea will survive the organisation.

A well written, passionate and considered eulogy Robin. I have many good memories of working alongside dedicated AusAID staff, including yourself, providing essential humanitarian support in response to a number of natural and non-natural emergencies. AusAID gained many international friends during those hard days of toil.

I perhaps didn't realise the extent to which AusAID has become part of my DNA until it was being taken from me. In this part of the world it is still 31 October so I find myself grasping at what little of myself remains, afraid to power down the laptop so I don't have to see the DFAT logo appear. Thanks Robin to a wonderful homage to "the agency formerly known as AusAID".

Thanks Robin for a perceptive and eloquent tribute to the AusAID that was. Thanks especially for singling out locally engaged staff - often the longest-serving and most under-appreciated. I look forward to your continued insightful analysis of the Australian aid that will be.

Thank you Robin, I really appreciated that terrific homage to AusAID's past.

A great analysis. Indeed, the only perceptive analysis. Thanks Robin.

Well said Robin. As a DFAT officer who has worked with AusAID a lot in some pretty risky countries, I have a high regard for AusAID staff and for the organisation. Please don't assume that the antagonism for DFAT is reciprocated. I'm sorry to see AusAID go, but DFAT will be the better organisation for the AusAID influx.

A beautifully crafted AusODE. How ominous that our unqualified purpose of 'helping people overcome poverty' should be put to death on All Hallow's Eve; resurrected so fittingly in the sanctified form (the national Interest) on the 1st of November. Having worked with AusAID as an implementing partner, I've seen the exceptionally good, the woefully bad and the frighteningly ugly. But as a taxpayer and a humanitarian, I believe wholly in the institution and feel yet more despondence about the government directing what we know to be its takeover. The challenge for AusAIDers-that-were now lies in remaining as stoic, magnanimous and judicious in the more personal battle of (dis)integration, as in the professional ones of which Robin speaks. Great empathy for job uncertainty and logistical adjustments though I have, and my belief in enterprise agreements and fair remuneration notwithstanding, I implore all to remain principled not petty, constructive not conceited. When an enlightened government is returned, we (Australians) will need you to have penetrated the undesirable imperialism of DFAT culture, and equally, absorbed some of their oft-impressive acuity. When this miscalculation is reversed, both agencies will be the better for it.

As somebody who has worked in Africa as part of the Australian Staffing Assistance Scheme of AIDAB back in the late 80s, and observed closely the initiatives of AIDAB/AusAID programs in my field in that region over the ensuing years, I am concerned at the implication this restructuring may have for effective Australian aid initiatives in the future. Restructuring appears to be a part of political change at state and federal level, but too often reinventing the wheel results in loss of dedicated staff and a step backwards in effectiveness of initiatives and outcomes.

Hear hear.