When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese turned up to Fiji for the Pacific Islands Forum last week, he did not come empty-handed.
Australia was already the region's largest aid donor, with a record $1.85 billion due to hit next financial year.
Then, the Labor government made an election promise to funnel an additional $525 million in development aid into the Pacific Islands over four years.
Mr Albanese's government is making its focus on rebuilding the international development program clear, but what has become muddy in recent years is where exactly the money is going.
The latest Aid Transparency Index has revealed that transparency around Australia's aid programs has continued to decline, with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) slipping to position 41 on a list of 50 donor countries and organisations.
It now sits at the bottom of the "fair" category, behind many of its peer aid agencies, and is only a few points away from joining countries such as Saudi Arabia and China in the "poor" rankings.
There are calls for the government to urgently address the "worrying trend" and to provide detailed information around how aid is being spent.
'A pretty poor effort'
With support from the European Commission and the UK Home Office, not-for-profit British aid watchdog Publish What You Fund (PWYF) has been releasing its transparency report biennially for 10 years.
It scores organisations against 35 indicators that correspond with the availability and accessibility of particular types of information.
Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) chief executive Marc Purcell described DFAT's ranking as "a pretty poor effort".
"In rugby terms, we're certainly not in the top league, and it's gone down progressively every two years," he told the ABC's Pacific Beat program.
The latest findings show a "worrying trend" in Australia's aid transparency, with DFAT down around 10 percentage points from the previous survey, Mr Purcell said.
In 2020, DFAT was ranked 34 out of 47 organisations. In 2018 it came in at 23 out of 45.
The report's author, Alex Tilley, said that DFAT had been losing points due to several factors.
There had been a drop in the frequency of aid data updates, and DFAT was not publishing standardised project results, nor forward-looking project budgets, he said.
"We are concerned that organisations [such as] DFAT — that have remained in the 'fair' category — have not made a concerted effort to embed a culture of aid transparency in their organisations or to set up systems that would facilitate regular publication of high-quality aid data," Mr Tilley told the ABC.
'Moral imperative' for transparency
PWYF said transparency played an important role in demonstrating the impact and effectiveness of aid, in supporting improvements in the quality of aid, and in helping the development community learn from both successes and failures.
"Aid spending also carries a moral imperative for transparency and accountability to those people and communities it purports to benefit," Mr Tilley said.
"Sharing of information facilitates coordination with other aid agencies and national governments which makes aid more efficient and responsive to needs."
Mr Purcell said taxpayers should also be able to monitor how their money is being spent.
"The transparency of Australia's aid is really important because it helps explain to the public, the taxpayer here in Australia, what's being done with their taxpayer dollars," he said.
Aid management 'a mess'
Mr Purcell attributes Australia's low score to a lack of resources going into reporting and information-gathering.
He also said the previous government was "gun shy in just telling things how they are".
"Under the previous Australian government, the management of aid was a bit of a mess," he said.
Minister for International Development and the Pacific Pat Conroy said the government was committed to a transparent international development program that was accountable for the delivery of results.
"The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade undertakes approximately 40 evaluations of development activities every year," he told the ABC.
The PWYF acknowledges that DFAT has some information available about the performance of its projects, however, Mr Tilley wants Australia to prioritise its publication of high-quality aid data that is in line with international standards.
"Standardised data is comparable across aid donors, easy to use for analysis, and is up to date and forward-looking," he said.
The 2022 index identified the African Development Bank's sovereign portfolio as the most-transparent organisation, saying it was "setting the standard for high-quality data publication".
The World Bank, Gavi and UNICEF were among the top 10 most-transparent organisations, while Germany, South Korea and the UK were among the countries leading in the "good" category.
Mr Purcell said it was time for Australia to "practise what you preach" or risk dropping down to the "very poor" category alongside China.
"Our critique of Chinese aid is going to look pretty hollow when we're nearly at the moment as poor as them," he said.
What can be done?
With Australia providing around $4 billion per year in international aid, having greater transparency provides an opportunity to demonstrate how the country's aid spending is having a positive impact on the world, Mr Tilley said.
The ACFID suggested that DFAT start by putting more money towards beefing up its communications capabilities so it can make more-detailed program documents easily accessible for the public and governments in the Pacific.
"It's simply a human resources issue where they allocate some more people in time for telling the story," Mr Purcell said.
Part of that story is admitting when things go wrong, he added.
"It's [a] complicated business. We can learn from this and we can improve," he said.
"That learning comes from making your evaluation documents available to the Pacific Island governments, to private donors and the public in the Pacific Islands and here in Australia."
