(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Australians love to travel abroad and they are doing so in growing numbers.
But should Australian diplomatic missions overseas be expected to provide advice and support to all those who get into trouble?
Or should consular assistance only be available in more serious cases?
These questions have been raised by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop as her department comes under growing pressure to provide consular support.
Michael Kenny reports.
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During this year's hard fought federal election campaign, there were few areas of agreement between Labor and the Coalition.
But both sides did agree that Australian travellers requesting consular help were placing too much strain on the resources of an over-stretched Department of Foreign Affairs.
Government figures show that Australians made over eight million trips abroad in 2012 and the Foreign Affairs Department estimates that on average, it provides guidance in over 20 thousand consular cases every year.
But at the same time, the Department has limited staff to respond to consular requests - only 15 positions across all of Australia's 95 overseas missions.
In a debate with her Labor counterpart Bob Carr during the election campaign, Julie Bishop called on travellers to take more personal responsibility and to be more realistic about what they expect from Australian consulates and embassies.
"Australians are an adventurous lot. They like to be travelling the world. But then when they get into trouble, they want to have Qantas fly them home. And we have to manage those expectations."
The then Foreign Minister Bob Carr agreed.
He said in 2012 alone, almost 1200 Australians were arrested overseas and slightly more were hospitalised.
Mr Carr said he believed it was important for Australian travellers to recognise that the primary focus of consulates and embassies should be on forging closer diplomatic ties between countries in areas such as free trade and counter-terrorism.
"We've got too much diplomatic time being taken up looking after Australians who in many cases should be taking responsibility for their own safety."
Since taking office in September, the Coalition government has emphasised it will continue to help Australians when they are caught up in disasters or political turmoil abroad.
But Julie Bishop has warned Australians that they are subject to the legal system of other countries when they travel.
She says Australians who break the law in other countries must take responsibility for their actions and can't expect the Australian government to always bail them out.
Ms Bishop has also urged Australians to take out travel insurance and check the Department of Foreign Affairs travel advisories before they leave the country.
The Australian Federation of Travel Agents believes its members can play an important role by encouraging clients to take personal responsibility and take out insurance.
The Federation's Chief Executive Officer Jayson Westbury says 65 per cent of Australian travellers are currently insured and it is critical to expand that number to take some pressure off consulates and embassies.
"Consular services are there to deal with matters of a diplomatic nature and are certainly not there to deal with somebody who has stubbed their toe in the shopping centre. That's for the medical centre and that's obviously where travellers find themselves in a predicament and they need help perhaps because of big medical bills. They tend to defer to the consular service in the country they're in and if the taxpayer was fitting the bill for every holiday-maker somewhere in the world who fell over and hurt themselves, then I don't think that's an appropriate use of taxpayer's money."
That's a view shared by Alex Oliver from the Lowy Institute for International Policy who recently completed a research project on consular services.
Ms Oliver says one way the federal government could address the growing cost of these services would be to introduce a levy on passports or airline tickets.
She says Britain, for example, has a $25 fee on every passport application, with the revenue directed into consular services.
"So there are some examples of that sort of levy being imposed without much of a kerfuffle from the travelling public. But when it's phased as a levy, people assume that it's a tax and the automatic reaction is to resist any increased taxes. But it's a fair way, I think of dealing with this increased burden because it only imposes a burden on people who are actually travelling."
The Abbott government has already said it won't introduce a new levy to cover the cost of consular services.
And Jayson Westbury from the Australian Federation of Travel Agents also opposes the proposal.
He argues that the solution lies in encouraging more travellers to take out insurance and in diverting more federal government funds away from other areas of the foreign affairs budget and into consular services.
"I think the government has got plenty of money and I think it's all about how governments and treasurers and budgets decide how it gets carved up. There's a thing called the passenger movement charge. It's on track to receive something in the order of a billion dollars per annum. The cost of moving passengers in airports which is what the passenger movement charge was originally introduced for is somewhere in the order of 350 million dollars. So the question for the government is- what are you doing with the rest of it? The government has got plenty of money. There doesn't need to be any additional levies for these sorts of services."
The Foreign Minister also says the Coalition will take a different stance to the previous Labor government on consular cases.
Julie Bishop says she will not provide what she calls a daily media commentary on high-profile cases when Australians get into trouble abroad.
Alex Oliver from the Lowy Institute supports this stand.
She believes Australian politicians often come under pressure to intervene in high profile cases, but she believes this can be counter-productive.
"And the media cycle does seem to be contributing to this. So when the media pays a lot of attention to those cases and some Australian travellers do seem to take their problems straight to the media, knowing that they're going to get a response. Then there's a lot of pressure placed on the individual politicians right up to the level of a Foreign Minister or even a Prime Minister to assist them and to resolve the problem at the highest level. Our elected representatives really have very important things on their plate and more important than intervening in those sort of cases."
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