The incoming brief for the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong contained the stark admission that cascading international crises including Afghanistan and Ukraine “have strained our ability to provide a high-level consular service to Australians overseas”.
The heavily redacted document, given to the incoming minister as part of a briefing to help them get across Australia’s foreign affairs portfolio and obtained by Guardian Australia under FOI laws, warned the “need for global collaboration and solutions is more acute than ever”.
“Functioning multilateralism is essential to addressing the huge challenges facing us, including climate change, pandemic preparedness and sustainable development, and to upholding a rules based international order,” the department brief said.
Under the sub-heading “keeping Australians safe” the department said “Covid-19 and concurrent international crises (Afghanistan, Ukraine) have strained our ability to provide a high-level consular service to Australians overseas”.
That’s an issue, along with passports, as more Australians are leaving the country than ever to travel, after two years of closed borders.
“Passport demand is at an all-time high,” the department said. “Some 2 million Australians put off getting a passport because of Covid and are expected to apply over the next year.
“Since November, we have advised customers to allow six weeks to get a passport instead of the usual three. An additional 250 additional contact centre and processing staff have commenced to manage the surge, keeping actual average processing times to below three weeks.”
Last month, assistant minister Tim Watts said part of the reason for the delays in passport approvals was because the previous government failed to plan for the “expected” surge once the borders were re-opened.
He said there would be an additional 1,100 staff by September.
Wong had been told of the approximately 50 Australian or Australian-linked children who remained in detention north-east Syria.
“The majority of these minors were born in the conflict zone; the remainder travelled with a parent,” Dfat reported.
Syria remained a “volatile and dangerous location” amid growing calls from human rights and advocacy groups for Australia to intervene and repatriate dozens of Australian women and children stranded in camps.
Those calls only became louder after 17-year-old Yusef Zahab from Sydney’s south-west was believed to have died in a Syrian jail, months after begging the Australian government for assistance.
The teenager was believed to have been killed after the prison he was detained in for the last three years was attacked by suspected members of the Islamic State attempting to free fighters.
Yusef was 11 when his parents took him and his siblings to what was then the newly declared IS caliphate in north-east Syria. He was separated from his mother and sister three years later and imprisoned without charge in an adult prison after the fall of IS.
When his suspected death was announced earlier this week, a spokesperson for Dfat said its ability to provide consular assistance to Australians in Syria was “deeply limited” because of the security situation, but the government remained “deeply concerned” about the situation of its citizens.
In April, UN experts accused the Australian government of failing its people in Syrian camps and warned of the malnourishment and trauma children in the camps were suffering.
While most of the briefing was redacted or removed as being confidential, the department did release information on a dedicated capability taskforce, looking at Dfat’s ability to respond and work within shifting global circumstances, which was one of Wong’s stated desires before taking up the portfolio.
Labor dumped Kathryn Campbell as the department secretary soon after taking office.
The taskforce will work to ensure Australia’s foreign service staff are best placed and trained to react to the change in diplomatic sands “to meet both current and future challenges”. A key component of the capability framework being created will be the “implementation of specific actions to build talent pipelines and to support succession planning”.
That met one of Wong’s wishes for the department from her time as shadow minister in the portfolio.
“The proposition that the world is changing and our region is being reshaped has to be our laser-like focus across government,” Wong said before the election.
“We have to ensure we have the capacity and leadership to respond and deal with it.”
