Australia is getting a bad rap and is sending mixed messages about fighting poverty at a major United Nations conference in Ethiopia, the federal opposition says.

Australian officials have been accused of trying to weaken language on tax reform and avoidance in an agreement to be finalised at the Financing for Development conference in Addis Ababa in the early hours of Thursday.

Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek said Australia was “standing out in a bad way” at the conference.

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“If we say we want countries to stand on their own two feet and raise their own revenue from their own resources, then we actually have to support the tax transparency agenda as well,” she told AAP from Addis Ababa.

Oxfam chief executive Helen Szoke said creative accounting and the exploitation of tax loopholes by big business resulted in developing countries missing out on millions in revenues that would help them fight poverty themselves.

“It would be shameful if Australia set back the goal of ending poverty further by choosing the interests of business over the world’s poorest people,” Dr Szoke said.

Ms Plibersek said aid workers at the grass roots and senior heads of UN agencies were perplexed by Australia’s step away from being a good global citizen and the recent $11.3 billion foreign aid cuts.

Foreign Minister Julie Bishop nor her parliamentary secretary Steve Ciobo have travelled to Africa for the conference, instead foreign affairs department deputy secretary Ewen McDonald is representing Australia.

Australia has also stymied a global push to require wealthy nations to provide a timetable by year’s end on how they will meet a UN foreign aid target.

The UN wants developed countries to give 0.7 per cent of their national income as foreign aid but Australia’s aid level is set to plummet to a record low of 0.22 per cent next year.

Comment has been sought from Ms Bishop.

-AAP