Our Purpose
To make Australia stronger, safer and more prosperous, to provide timely and responsive consular and passport services, and to ensure a secure Australian Government presence overseas.
Highlights 2018–19
Priority 1
Promote a stable and prosperous Indo-Pacific
- Strengthened Indo-Pacific relationships
- Stepped up support for the Pacific and Timor-Leste
- Celebrated five years of the New Colombo Plan—creating people-to-people links in our region with almost 50,000 Australian scholars since 2014
Priority 2
Pursue our economic, trade and investment agenda for opportunity
- Helped facilitate $470 billion in Australian goods and services exports
- Free trade agreements signed with Indonesia and Hong Kong
- Secured new access for Australian businesses to government contracts worth $2.3 trillion in 47 international markets
Priority 3
Keep Australia and Australians safe and secure
- Led international advocacy on counter-terrorism, cyber and international security
- Worked against modern slavery, human trafficking and nuclear proliferation
- Supported PM leadership at G20 to prevent the use of social media platforms by terrorists
Priority 4
Deliver an innovative development assistance program
- Delivered world class $3.9 billion development assistance program
- A record $1.2 billion to the Pacific
- Humanitarian assistance to Vanuatu, Indonesia and Laos for disaster response
Priority 5
Advance global cooperation
- Championed human rights in the United Nations Human Rights Council
- Shaped the world’s institutions, rules and norms
- Flagship Australia now public diplomacy promotion in Japan and ASEAN
Priority 6
Support Australians overseas
- Issued a record 2.1 million passports
- Assisted 13,715 Australians in difficulty overseas, about 1,400 consular cases each day
Priority 7
Provide a secure and effective overseas presence
- Opened three new posts—Kolkata (India), Funafuti (Tuvalu) and Shenyang (China)
- Award-winning Post-in-a-Box mobile global communications capability
Our posts
Rolling out the largest expansion of Australia's diplomatic network in 40 years with 120 posts in 83 countries
Nine locations across Australia
Around half our posts and three quarters of our people overseas are in the Indo-Pacific
Our posts include embassies, high commissions, multilateral missions, consulates-general, consulates and representative offices*
Our beginnings
Established as the Department of External Affairs in 1901
First overseas post opened in London in 1910
First Australian trade commissioners appointed to Canada, New Zealand, Japan, China and the Netherlands East Indies (later Indonesia) 1934–35
Diplomatic posts established in the United States and Japan in 1940 and China in 1941
- DFAT posts
- State and territory offices
- Torres Strait Treaty Liaison Office
- Austrade-managed posts providing consular services
Our people
Overview
6,078 staff
3,136 overseas including 2,276 locally engaged staff in our overseas posts
2,942 in Australia
Our diversity Australian Public Service staff
18% from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds
2.9% report a disability
2.7% identify as Indigenous
40% of our heads of mission are women