Some important issues are just too slippery, too remote or too big to wrap your head around. Foreign aid is one of them.

The fact that a big slice of Australia’s $4.3 billion (yes, billion) foreign aid budget is pocketed by a handful of largely invisible companies should ring alarm bells within government.

The fact that one of the biggest of those companies files no public accounts with Australian regulators and was, until recently, domiciled in an international tax haven should ring more alarm bells.

Very few people question Australia’s responsibility to provide aid to under-developed and developing countries. But the importance of that responsibility, and the size of the aid budget, means accountability, transparency and probity must be overriding — and clearly that is far from happening, as highlighted by this week’s joint investigation by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism and Crikey.

We kicked off our series yesterday with this line:

The central question at the heart of this web of complex company structuring is this: such set-ups for tax minimisation purposes are common in international company business – but is it acceptable for major recipients of Australian government contracts to operate in this way?

As Bernard Keane wrote yesterday, under the government’s commitment to increase foreign aid to 0.5% of Gross National Income, the current figure of $4.3 billion is scheduled to rise to $8-9 billion in five years’ time.

Now’s the time to read the fine print on Australian’s foreign aid billions.