14 February 2019: The Australian Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee has released a report outlining 18 recommendations for improving SDG implementation in the country. This report follows a series of initiatives put in place by the Government of Australia to make progress on the SDGs.

On 4 December 2017, the Senate – which is part of the Australian Federal Parliament – requested its Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee to examine and report on the SDGs, with a focus on: understanding of the SDG across the Australian government and in the wider Australian community; potential costs, benefits and opportunities for Australia in the domestic implementation of the SDG; and the governance structures and accountability measures required at the national, state and local levels of government to ensure an integrated approach to implementing the SDGs in a way that is “both meaningful and achieves real outcomes.”

The Committee was also mandated to examine: ways to monitor and communicate the performance against the SDGs in order to engage government, businesses and the public, and allow effective review of Australia’s performance by civil society; the SDGs that are currently being addressed by Australia’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) programme; and examples of best practice in how other countries are implementing the SDGs.

In February 2018, the Committee issued its report, which includes: suggestions for improving the national governance of the SDGs; suggestions for monitoring and reporting progress against the Goals; proposals for partnering on the SDGs with other levels of government, civil society and the private sector; examples of SDG implementation across the Indo-Pacific; and proposals to support the SDGs through ODA.

Among its recommendations, the Committee calls on the Australian Government to:

• Publish a national SDG implementation plan that includes national priorities and regular reports of Australia’s performance against the Goals;
• Provide an indicator-based assessment to Parliament at least every two years that tracks Australia’s performance against the Goals;
• Establish a national SDG secretariat to, inter alia, provide support to the existing interdepartmental committee;
• Provide effective coordination of Australia’s actions to implement and report on the SDGs;
• Develop a framework to ensure that its agencies include the SDGs in their annual reporting by 2020-2021;
• Support state, territory and local governments to create their own plans for the implementation of the SDGs in their jurisdictions;
• Partner with “private and tertiary sector” stakeholders to develop and disseminate Australian guidance on reporting against the Goals; and
• Identify opportunities to assist small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to build capacity to access sustainable procurement and reporting systems.

In 2018, Australia presented its first Voluntary National Review (VNR) at the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF), after launching its VNR domestically in June 2018. According to its VNR report, Australia has established an interdepartmental committee at the Deputy Secretary level, which is co-chaired by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Prime Minister and Cabinet, with a view to coordinating the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs domestically and internationally.

Among other initiatives, Australia also established a Reporting Platform on the SDG Indicators that provides official government data on the SDG indicators, and an SDGs website. [Publication: United Nations Sustainable Development Goals]