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Canada's finance ministry manages the bulk of Canada's core contributions to the international financial institutions, while CIDA, now DFATD, manages contributions to UN and other global and regional organisations. This is a common arrangement among donors. Australia's Treasury manages Australia's overall relationships with the international financial institutions but largely defers to AusAID, now DFAT, on matters relating to the operation and replenishment of their concessional financing arms. So you are right that Australia is and will remain a little more centralised in its management of multilateral contributions. (In fact this is true of ODA management generally. While AusAID and CIDA both managed the bulk of their countries's aid, CIDA's share was at last count just under 70 per cent and AusAID's just under 90 per cent.) At the same time, Canada is a much more generous donor to the multilateral system: in some recent years it has provided as much as 30 per cent of its aid as core contributions to multilateral organisations, by comparison with around 15 per cent in the case of Australia.

As I understand it, that's the pre-integration organisational structure. It basically glues the former AusAID's divisional structure onto DFAT's and makes a couple of preliminary moves, namely shifting some generic corporate services functions and AusAID's G20 branch across to DFAT. It's not 'interim' in the same sense as the Canadian structure, which is the post-integration one -- though subject to some further tweaking after a 90-day review.

There's an interim organisation chart of the new amalgamated structure on the DFAT webpage. Follow the link and click for a pdf: http://www.dfat.gov.au/dept/

I think this is an excellent paper and the authors are to be congratulated. I would like to see the concept taken further: to think through the best means of both getting a better understanding of development assistance; identifying 'aid that works' and serves the national interest; and of expressing the outomes of the apparently large number of aid effectiveness reviews in clear and consistent language, tested against understood criteria. The journey may well lead to surprising outcomes that will recommend radical changes in the nature of our aid programs, even to the dropping of old linear concepts and definitions of aid. Such an approach should seek to broaden the constituency base for aid to embrace some unusual suspects.

Better than Department of Foreign Affairs, Humanitarian Assistance and Trade (DFAHT).

hhhmmmm...almost at the exact same moment I post this good news it turns out things have taken a turn for the worse again: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/15/amazon-deforestation-increased-one-third

Hi Sean, She doesn't mention that explicitly -- although I imagine it must be part of the story. However, it clearly isn't the whole story. And also, she talks of significant reaforestation going on in some countries too. Terence

Hi Terence. Bandwidth will prevent me from listening to this until the end of the month but I'm wondering if she discusses one factor not mentioned above: is the rate of deforestation slowing because most of the easily accessible forest has already been felled? I also wonder if there are parallels with other rainforest - e.g. Solomons?

One key difference: Contributions to Multilaterals /International Organisations in Australia is managed by AusAid now DFAT. In Canada it is under the Finance Ministry (correct me if I'm wrong). If that is so, Australia has an advantage to still manage its aid/ODA flows through a singular and possibly still development-oriented institution.

Is that "effectiveness" for Australian resources or effectiveness for the recipient countries?

Thanks for your question. It’s always about national interest, one way or another. However national interest has multiple lens; for example, securing a country’s bilateral support for free trade (or even their cooperation for stemming irregular boat arrivals), using the aid program may achieve the ‘first’ best foreign policy objective but only the ‘second’ or ‘third’ best development outcome. Under Australia Aid’s new mandate, such an outcome may represent ‘effective aid’.

I have heard that DFAT will be renamed the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Aid (DFATA). Peter Jones Melbourne