The Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) was established in July 2019. The facility uses aid grant funding of up to $500 million, combined with long-term loans of up to $1.5 billion, to support infrastructure development in Pacific countries and Timor-Leste (over seven years). Loans will be disbursed through Export Finance Australia. An advisory board will review proposals, with relevant ministers making final decisions on investments.

An early audit of the AIFFP would assess the effectiveness of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's (DFAT's) design and inception planning of the facility. This would include an examination of frameworks under which the board has been established and will operate, and the efficacy of DFAT's management of arrangements with Export Finance Australia.

This audit would assess Austrade's effectiveness in supporting an expansion in the export of Australian services and in the administration of the Export Market Development Grants (EMDG) scheme.

The services sector generates over 70 per cent of Australia's GDP and employs four out of every five Australians, yet trade in services accounted for only 22.3 per cent of Australia's total trade in calendar year 2018. In 2017, Austrade published a strategy to address this, with a particular focus on education, tourism and financial services.

The audit would examine the effectiveness of Austrade's activities to implement its strategy, as well as Austrade's administration of the EMDG scheme, which provides financial assistance to Australian small to medium-sized businesses to support international marketing and promotion activities. A total of $526.4 million has been awarded in grants over the four years to 2018–19.

This audit would assess the effectiveness of the National Indigenous Australians Agency's (NIAA's) arrangements to control the risk of grant recipient fraud and noncompliance.

The Indigenous Advancement Strategy has a budget of $5.2 billion over the four years to 2022–23. As at February 2020, the NIAA was funding 1,838 grants to over 1,000 service providers, valued at $3.97 billion. Inadequate control of fraud and noncompliance would create a significant risk of misuse of public money, and would have a detrimental impact on the performance and availability of services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

The audit could provide assurance that the NIAA has effective arrangements supporting the integrity of programs aimed at improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.