Most of what Australian governments do to promote the interests of Australian business is centred on either looking after political and bureaucratic mates or extracting announcement value, not on helping the bottom line of Australian exporters and investors overseas.
THE BUCKINGHAM SPECIAL
The Victorian Government recently did a study into its overseas representation and concluded it didn't have enough offices and pushed for more in South East Asia [pdf]
Clearly the author had a hankering for being asked to do more studies.
Perhaps certain among the intimate leadership group of Nationals Party MPs recently cruelly deprived of their chauffeured limousines to ferry them home to their inner-city flats from cocktail parties and gallery openings could commission David Buckingham to do a report into their transport needs. Bentleys for all, he'd probably opine.
A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY
Yet despite Buckingham's report, a former head of Austrade and former NSW Premier Bob Carr reckon state government representative offices overseas are a waste of money. Their claims don't really come as a huge shock.
While no doubt, many of those who've represented Victoria and Australia have meant well, it seems doubtful the world would come to an end had they not been able to do so.
Consider the scandalous situation in the City of Melbourne which maintains its own international division with dozens of cardigans, complete with its own overseas representation in China and probably elsewhere.
In the OC's observation, it can be useful for Australian exporters and investors doing business overseas to be able to rely on the prestige of being associated with an embassy itself. But even that is only very rarely useful for anything. Occasionally they have useful contacts, but usually these are in government. The truth is that at best Australian government representatives are of marginal use to any Australian business. And Austrade has none of the prestige of an Embassy with all of the uselessness.
Bodies like the Australian-Israel Chamber of Commerce, not funded at all by taxpayers as far as we know, do much more to promote Australian exports and investment opportunities in one small market than DFAT ever could.
TIME TO DIRTY UP
It's for that reason we should end the pretence about what these offices can achieve. Austrade and pathetic state government equivalents are mostly a waste of money.
They are waste of money because there is little they do that business cannot easily do for itself. There is one area though where government is best positioned to take action.
While it might not be polite to talk of such things, increasingly where governments can be useful for business is in secret intelligence gathering in foreign countries and providing relevant information to Australian businesses operating there. Many other nations do this and we understand ASIS very occasionally does to some extent too, albeit with very limited resources.
Trouble is there's no announcement value in competitive intelligence. The only time you get press in the spy business is when you get caught. And for that reason, it will remain a very low priority on our politicians' agenda while they greedily contemplate their own Vanstone-Beattie style overseas retirement with the public picking up the bill.
Game on.
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