Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Australia has played a proud part in the formation of the United Nations and in its continuation, nurturing and support—give or take the lack of enthusiasm by some administrations most recently, but being restored by the Rudd government. The United Nations has three noble aims worth pursuing no matter what the faults and foibles of the organisation are: to end the scourge of war, to affirm the faith in fundamental human rights, and to promote social progress and better standards of life. They are three noble aims. The organisation is 60-odd years old, and I thank the member for Fremantle for bringing to the attention of the House the remembrance of the anniversary of its founding.

I would like to share with you in the little time that remains a number of the views expressed by others that ably sum up how I feel about the United Nations and also raise some of the concerns that others have with the United Nations. The former speaker, of course, raised the necessity of reform as the United Nations evolves. The first I would like to share with you comes from an interesting book by Alison Broinowski and James Wilkinson called The Third Try: Can the UN Work? I recommend it to anyone who likes a good read on this. It says:

The United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Genocide Convention are extraordinary documents. They changed the course of history by moving not toward a world government, but toward global embrace of the universal principles that have guided the world’s most advanced democracies: rule of law, democratic processes, equal opportunity and justice for all. This vision remains valid, relevant, and superior to any alternative.

The beginning of the next paragraph says:

America is the keystone nation.

I was taken by the comments of Professor Sir Adam Roberts, who is in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University and a noted observer of the UN. The book says:

… cautioned us that those who believe the UN can save the world will be disappointed, because the UN, having nation states as its members, will always be a cockpit of power politics … Sir Adam Roberts pointed out, the Charter is not a complete global security system.

Most poignantly, he said:

But the perfect should not be the enemy of the good, and the Security Council has demonstrated it can succeed when the will is there. The UN remains the sole repository of international legitimacy. While it has failed to live up to its potential, evolution is far more likely than revolution to improve its capabilities and performance.

Just on the other side of the question, I note several writings that I came across in the last couple of years when I did some studies in international relations of an extraordinary conservative from the United States called Jesse Helms, who is a great hater of the United Nations and did not hold back. He most forcefully put that case directly to the UN Security Council. This is the type of attitude that has borne fruit in the United States, unfortunately, let loose by Ronald Reagan and his cohorts some time ago and reinforced by George W. He said:

No UN institution is competent to judge the foreign policy and national security decisions of the United States ... The UN is seeking to impose its utopian vision of ‘international law’ on Americans.

However, as the book says:

… he was willing to praise UN ‘core tasks’ of peacekeeping, weapons inspections, humanitarian relief, and helping sovereign states work together.

But:

... he mocked the notion that a majority of Americans support international cooperation by saying he had done poorly in the polls but always won election.

We will see about that.

I will conclude with the same authors that I commenced with:

The 1945 goal of a world made more secure, prosperous, and just through international cooperation is as worthy today as it was then. The alternatives, as Roosevelt told Congress on his return from Yalta, involve unilateral actions, spheres of influence, and exclusive alliances, which ‘have been tried for centuries—and have always failed.’ At the time, FDR’s words were intended to persuade Americans to support the UN. Today, with the third try in progress, they have the ring of chastisement and forewarning. (Time expired)

See this speech in context