The Australian government spent more than $42,000 on Sydney-themed merchandise for the ill-fated 2023 Quad leaders’ summit before the event was hastily moved to Japan.
Guardian Australia can reveal the government’s planning taskforce also spent more than $6m in preparation for the event to be hosted at the Sydney Opera House.
But the government insists the funds didn’t all go to waste after the US president, Joe Biden, cut short his regional travel to try to solve the domestic debt ceiling crisis.
That is because officials say some of the costs were linked to the relocated talks that Australia chaired in Hiroshima, Japan, on the sidelines of the G7 summit.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had previously announced that “Australia’s most recognisable building” would be the venue for talks with Biden and the prime ministers of Japan and India on 24 May.
It is understood some Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade staff were seen in Canberra wearing Quad-related badges with the Sydney Opera House as the main design feature.
The merchandise that was ordered included items considered typical for an international summit including stationery, media banners and accreditation lanyards. The merchandise used the 2023 Quad Leaders’ Summit logo, including the word “Sydney”.
The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C), which was the agency in charge of Australia’s preparations for the summit, confirmed the costs.
“While a total of $42,178 was paid for merchandise to be used for the summit that was planned for Sydney, some of this merchandise was able to be used at the Hiroshima meeting,” a PM&C spokesperson said.
“As at 3 August 2023, the Quad Leaders’ Summit Taskforce has spent $6.29m to support the Quad Leaders’ Summit meeting, with some of these costs associated with the Hiroshima meeting.”
The Sydney event was cancelled with just one week’s notice, after Biden decided to return home after the G7 summit in Japan to negotiate with congressional leaders to prevent a US debt default. That meant the US president scrapped visits to Papua New Guinea and Australia.
The Quad – a diplomatic grouping of Australia, Japan, India and the US – has ramped up its activities, including leader-level talks, in recent years. While it is not a formal alliance, the Quad is viewed warily by Beijing, which sees it as a means to contain China’s growing influence in the region.
Despite the cancellation, Albanese chaired a meeting on the sidelines of the G7 in Hiroshima with Biden and the other two prime ministers – Narendra Modi and Fumio Kishida – that ended with the release of a “positive” vision statement and other announcements that would have been made in Sydney.
Biden thanked the other leaders “for accommodating the change of location, particularly you, Prime Minister Albanese, especially for your impressive leadership of the Quad this year and your gracious flexibility in holding the meeting here again in Japan”.
The next Quad leaders’ event will be held in India next year.
Guardian Australia sought the Quad expenditure figures directly from PM&C after the department’s responses to similar questions on notice through the Senate estimates process were listed as “overdue” on the parliamentary website.
The shadow minister for foreign affairs, Simon Birmingham, said the Coalition had been asking “simple questions” about the allocation of millions of dollars of taxpayer funding for the Quad.
“The opposition accepts in good faith that when officials take detailed questions on notice, they will answer them within the required timeframe,” Birmingham said.
“With over 100 questions now overdue from his own department, the prime minister must be clear if he is holding up this process and failing his own promises of transparency and accountability.”
The PM&C spokesperson said: “Even though the number of Senate estimates questions on notice directed to the department has more than doubled over the past 12 months, the department continues to work to methodically respond to questions from senators.”
It is understood PM&C received an average of 220 questions on notice a year through Senate estimates in the decade to 2022, but the past year has seen 500 such questions.
