Abstract:

This report covers the 2025 Australian Aid Transparency Audit run by the ANU Development Policy Centre. The Centre audits Australian aid program transparency every three years – previous audits were completed in 2013, 2016, 2019 and 2022.

In 2025, we continued the practice used in previous audits and assessed the Aid Program’s transparency about the projects it funds. This included auditing whether the Aid Program lists all of the projects, whether it provides basic information about these projects and whether it makes detailed documentation available covering the full aid project cycle. As in previous audits, we covered projects from Pacific countries, some South-east and East Asian countries, and projects from a random sample of country or regional programs elsewhere.

In 2025, we also continued the practice, started in 2022, of assessing the availability of high-level Australian aid data. In addition, we expanded our analysis to assess the availability of aid project performance data, and we assessed the utility of Australia’s new AusDevPortal.

The central finding of this Audit is that, whereas previous audits had documented general declines in Australian aid transparency, in 2025 Australian aid transparency improved considerably in a range of ways. These improvements were driven, first and foremost, by AusDevPortal, which has led to considerable transparency improvements. Nevertheless, the 2025 Audit also identified areas where improvements are still needed.