Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The United Nations Security Council, the UNSC, is the powerful body of the United Nations with the power to authorise the deployment of troops from UN member countries, mandate ceasefires during conflicts and impose economic penalties on countries. The Security Council is comprised of representatives from 15 member countries. However, only five representatives are permanent. The permanent members are the countries of the United States of America, United Kingdom, China, Russia and France.

It is therefore appropriate that the coalition welcome the vote which took place on 18 October, New York time, which saw Australia secure a two-year term during 2013-14 as a temporary member of the UN Security Council. Australia won its seat with 140 votes in a three-round contest against Finland and Luxembourg, with at least 129 votes required to secure the seat. Australia has held a position on the UN Security Council four times. We first held a seat when the UN was created post World War II, with a seat in 1946-47; again, in 1956-57; followed by 1973-74; and, most recently, in 1985-86.

I share the sentiment of the Leader of the Opposition who said, 'Australia's voice should be heard because of our values, and we should always act in accordance with our values.' The executive director and director of the global issues program at the Lowy Institute, Michael Fullilove, stated that, 'With a seat at the G20 and now on the United Nations Security Council, Australia sits at the two biggest global tables, which will allow us to increase our international leverage and reputation and be a source of prestige. However, it will also stretch our foreign policy development.'

I would like to acknowledge the former Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, who worked hard to put Australia forward for a seat on the UN Security Council and who began the bidding process. Now that Australia has gained a seat on the UNSC, it is important that the government reaffirms and re-embraces Australia's longstanding principles, values and priorities. The Prime Minister has stated that Australia's key priorities on the council will include Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and North Korea and that Australia will also ensure the effectiveness of UNSC sanction regimes, including those targeting individual associations with al-Qaeda.

The government now needs to explain what it plans to achieve from those priorities and detail any commitments that were made to other nations as it campaigned for support to win the seat. If there is a change of government following the 2013 election—hopefully, that will happen; I am sure the member for Hughes will agree with me—the coalition commits to supporting Australia's officials and to ensuring that Australia serves with distinction and integrity for the remainder of our term on the UNSC.

The UNSC oversees 15 peacekeeping operations—and we all know, and we are now joined by the member for Eden-Monaro, who also knows, how great our commitment is to peacekeeping deployments around the world—as well as 13 political and peace-building missions throughout the globe, with 117,000 personnel deployed. This is the largest number of deployed troops, second only to the United States. The Security Council also manages 13 sanction regimes and eight subsidiary bodies, covering topics including weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and armed conflict.

The government paid almost $25 million to secure the seat on the United Nations Security Council, but the true cost is actually much higher. It is likely that indirect costs will run into the tens of millions of dollars but, to date, the government has, unfortunately, refused to release details of the full cost of the bid. Only this afternoon, we heard that the foreign minister is pushing for $34 million to fund our Security Council seat.

The member for Kooyong has just joined us, and I know that he contributed a very well-written op-ed in the Herald Sun on 15 October in which, admittedly, he did state that getting elected on the Security Council 'will be a good thing'. He wrote:

Australia is a significant player in the world and, as a founding member of the UN and the 12th biggest contributor to its annual budget, we should always strive to sit at the top table.

But whatever the result on Thursday, the Government has some explaining to do.

The member for Kooyong is right in that respect. He wrote further:

But perhaps one of most alarming aspects of our UN campaign has been the way our multi-billion-dollar aid budget has been redirected to get us over the line.

Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean have all been the beneficiaries, as a growing share of our $5 billion annual aid budget has been dispensed to those regions.

He wrote that, as the shadow foreign affairs minister had pointed out:

… this has included funding some very odd projects—

As the member for Kooyong termed it—

including $150,000 for a statue commemorating the anti-slavery movement in Africa and the Caribbean to be located at the UN Plaza in New York.

…   …   …

On Australia's doorstep in the South Pacific there is real humanitarian need. For example, 12,000 children under five die in Papua New Guinea each year and a significant number of households in the Solomon Islands do not have access to quality sanitation.

This is where our aid priority should be. Yes, we have global responsibilities, but first and foremost we should look to improve the situation in our own backyard.

I know that the amount of money we are talking about—$25 million to secure the seat and $34 million now to go towards our position on the UNSC—could work wonders; it could support all sorts of projects—hospitals, water infrastructure or whatever—in regional areas.

However, I take this opportunity to say, 'Well done on securing the seat.' It is important to be at the top table, as the member for Kooyong acknowledged and, indeed, as the Leader of the Opposition acknowledged. We as a coalition supported the government in its bid to get the seat. We have now obtained the seat and we need to make the most of it. I also take this opportunity to congratulate the other nations who also won a temporary UNSC seat—South Korea, Luxembourg, Argentina, and Rwanda.

Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a moment of great celebration for this nation. After having missed out on a seat on the Security Council for so many years, to have now secured this position is a massive tribute to the many people who worked so hard on our bid—former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who also worked assiduously on this bid while foreign minister; the current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Senator Carr; Gary Quinlan and all the team at the UN mission; so many of our post staff all around the world; and the many members of caucus and the government who used every opportunity at every level of engagement to advance the cause.

This achievement also has great personal meaning for me. My initial history with this goes back to the Howard government's bid for a seat on the Security Council back in 1996, in which I was heavily involved. With the 1996 bid, we were of the view that the bid was going to be successful—we had been given certain indications from the post in New York to that effect. We had scheduled a meeting over at DFAT for the day after the vote to talk about what we were going to do with this seat on the Security Council. But that meeting became a wake instead of a celebration and a plan for the way ahead. I will never forget sitting in the cafeteria, commiserating with my DFAT colleagues, when the foreign minister of the time, Alexander Downer, came up to one of my DFAT colleagues—I won't name him—slapped him on the back and said, 'Never mind, mate—who cares anyway?' Those were his exact words.

From that point on, the Howard government's attitude to the Security Council and to the United Nations was completely poisoned. After that time, we were shackled to the Deputy Dawg syndrome—not that there is anything wrong with making sure that our relationship with our No.1 security partner, the United States, is sound and secure. But, from that point on, the Howard government completely turned its back on multilateralism and on recognising what the UN brings to the table in relation to achieving security outcomes.

This was a dark period. Those of us who were operating at a working level did our best to maintain Australia's relationship, engagement and reputation with various colleagues in UN agencies and UN related supported organisations. I am very proud of my involvement with the challenges of the peacekeeping movement established by the Swedes—arising out of the Folke Bernadotte Academy and, in particular, the efforts of Annika Hilding Norberg, who did such a great job in getting that organisation rolling. The academy featured many of the key players in UN peacekeeping and supporters of the UN organisation. Through those years, we were able to keep Australia's flag flying in the various secretariats and in the organisation itself—so that they understood that the attitudes of the government were not necessarily those of a country with a rich tradition of engagement with the United Nations, as is well known and understood. The involvement of Doc Evatt, Ben Chifley and others in shaping the institutions of the UN and many of its early instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is a proud part of Australian Labor's history.

So it is a proud history and we are now picking up the torch again to carry forward. The last time that we had a Security Council seat was of course under the Hawke-Keating government.

The fact that the Howard government never made a subsequent bid and did not understand what the UN was useful for in a security context was well illustrated a number of times through the period of the Howard government. One of these was the involvement in Iraq. During that time it was not appreciated that the instruments of the United Nations are extremely useful in things like political transition, in delivering legitimacy through the operation and management and institution of electoral processes. It was very frustrating for me, being in Iraq, to see the time wasted with the attitude that was evidenced against United Nations' instruments and United Nations' officials on the ground under that great man Sergio Vieira de Mello, who was a good friend of mine, as were many of the staff at the Canal Hotel, the UN headquarters, with whom I had worked—people such as Fiona Watson and Nadia Younes. They were all great people, who would have been very useful in moving the ball forward in Iraq after the terrible problems and setbacks we suffered as a result of the lack of legitimacy in that operation because UN processes were not properly adhered to and worked through and because the war itself was based on a false premise—in fact, on a lie.

A lot of time was wasted on the ground in Iraq and the great tragedy that followed was the bombing of the Canal Hotel. We lost all those great friends with whom we had worked up until that point, including Nadia, Fiona and Sergio.

That was one example of the Howard government not adding its voice to advocating for a greater involvement of the UN. Eventually, the US administration at the time, the Bush administration, realised that you had to turn to the UN to effect a transition that would be acceptable to the Iraqis.

Another example was during the second East Timor crisis, in 2006, when the view, held strongly within Defence, was that we should have again turned to a blue-helmeted operation there. That would have not only defrayed costs of the operation but also helped us to accumulate and assemble a more varied and more representative group of participating nations. But, again, the foreign minister at the time, Mr Downer, rejected the advice seeking to place that operation under a UN umbrella.

We have seen Mr Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, continue with this lack of understanding, this supreme ignorance of multilateralism and its importance to our neighbours in this region. Nothing could be more illustrative of that than Mr Abbott's incredible comments when he condemned the Prime Minister for 'swanning around' at the UN in support of our bid and, as he said, 'talking to Africans, when she should have been meeting the Indonesian President'. He did not understand it because, of course, the Indonesian President was there. Mr Abbott does not understand how important the UN is to the Indonesians, the Malaysians, the Chinese, the Koreans—to all our neighbours, all of those who are concerned about having a mechanism that helps to ameliorate the great power dynamics in this world, that helps get the agendas of small and medium countries dealt with and the protections and rules that govern the international space that give them confidence. There was a total lack of understanding on behalf of the coalition about the importance of the UN to our neighbours. How could he then accuse the Prime Minister of not doing her job when, in fact, she was in New York in support of our bid, talking to Africans and the Indonesian Prime Minister. Of course, not only is there a lack of understanding that the UN is important to our neighbours but also the importance of the growth of Africa and our relationship with Africa is really strongly evident here as well.

I remember well in 1996 our bid failed largely because of the lack of support of Africa and the lack of our engagement with Africa. That was also not understood by the Howard government. One of the great benefits of this process has been the successful re-engagement of Australia with Africa. When people talk about the $25 million that was spent on this bid, they do not appreciate that this is not $25 million that was spent on a bid; this was $25 million that was invested in our broader diplomatic engagement, which was going to produce a payoff regardless of whether we had on this bid or not. It is not well understood by the coalition that there are 300 Australian companies or more operating in Africa these days. Africa is coming continent and it is just as important to us in the longer term as our relationship with our near neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region. Asia-Pacific is certainly more advanced down that trail, as the Asian white paper well and truly illustrates and elucidates, but Africa will not be far behind.

So it was important for us to re-engage. As someone who has served in Africa wearing a blue beret—someone who has been very, very concerned and seriously interested in re-engaging with Africa—it was a great delight to me to see this happen. It paid off big time. It is hard for us to work out in fact any country in Africa that did not support our bid. That was a great outcome of the investment and the process.

Mr Abbott's comments not only displayed his ignorance but also his disloyalty. The sorts of comments we saw coming from shadow foreign minister and Deputy Leader of the Opposition was like going to a Wallabies match and hearing Australians hectoring their own team. What gross disloyalty this was in the lead-up to the vote and what absolute hypocrisy now for them to say, 'Well, yes, it is a good thing, and of course we supported,' when they did everything to undermine that bid. That was gross disloyalty from people who claim to be good Australians. There was no evidence of it in the lead-up to that bid. There was no assistance from any member of the coalition in that bid. So they cannot claim the slightest kudos for this effort that was mounted exclusively by a Labor government—and overwhelmingly successfully so. As the Foreign Minister claimed, This was big and it was juicy.

So now what is it we do with success we have achieved? We will do a lot of things that will advance Australia's cause and Australia's interests in this world, which are incredibly interdependent. The globalised world that we live in is globalised not only economically but also in its security concerns. We will advance the benefits of Australians in a more secure and more economically stable world. We have a lot to bring to the table with our experience in peacekeeping and our experience in aid and development. Being on the Security Council will amplify our voice in that space. We will make great use of it, as we have a lot of useful and positive things to say in that space. The benefits that we will obtain over many years from now from the rejuvenation of our engagement in the international community will be evident. Also, of course, it offers us the opportunity to ensure a better environment for the world as a good citizen, as Australians have always sought to do.

In this context I would like to particularly pay tribute, in addition to, of course, all those who worked so hard and that I have enumerated, I am particular proud of the efforts of the Australian Civil-Military Centre in supporting this effort. They have sailed under the radar a bit, but they worked extremely hard and provided a lot of the substance that convinced people of Australia's benefit of being on the Security Council—what we can actually deliver; the policy outcomes. Many times interlocutors that I engaged with would say to me, 'Australia will win this bid if you can project a positive policy platform for going forward.' The Australian Civil-Military Centre certainly did that.

I was very pleased to be involved in establishing the centre. In fact, it was one of the key reasons why I entered politics in the first place. The establishment of the centre, understood and supported by former Prime Minister Rudd, was a key factor in my green to run for the seat of the Eden-Monaro. I was very pleased to be with the centre when we engaged with the African Union on the protection of civilians concept and advancing that cause, and was with the centre team in Addis Ababa engaging with the secretary and giving flesh to the engagement strategy and the message that we were sending to Africa. It was well appreciated. We have African representatives coming to Australia, and we did a lot of solid work.

I want to pay tribute to Peter Thomson from the Attorney-General's Department who did so much good work in drafting the materials for the protection of civilians policies that the African Union were reaching out for and the substance of how those things were to be implemented in the advice and the assistance that we gave them in that process.

The centre also engaged very extensively with permanent representatives. In fact, 65 permanent representatives attended many of the seminars that the Civil-Military Centre conducted from 14 June 2011 through to August 2012. I was very pleased to have opened the last of those seminars in August. Lessons learned activities were performed by the centre, including the production of the Partnering for Peace: Australia’s Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding Experiences in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and in Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. It is a fantastic product. I was very pleased to have been in New York for a few days with Jose Ramos-Horta. We conducted a number of activities based on the production of this product, conducted lessons learned seminars and talked about Australia's contribution in this space but also what we can bring to the table as a result of that experience and those contributions in the past.

The centre put a lot of hard work into setting up those activities in New York and having many visits from permanent representatives in Australia associated with activities that they were running. That included the International Forum for the Challenges of Peace Operations that I mentioned I had been previously engaged with. They are our instrument in engagement with the challenges process at this time and are doing a lot of hard work and a lot of good work in that space as well.

I want to pay tribute to Dr Alan Ryan; his predecessor, Mike Smith, a good friend of mine and former Army general who got the centre up and running in the first place and who is well-known to our East Timorese friends; and my friend the member for Page, who had extensive experience in Timor Leste herself and whose contacts were also very useful in advancing our cause and acceptance within the Asia-Pacific as a representative of this region, notwithstanding that we are in WEOG. It was most pleasing to see in my engagement with interlocutors in this process that they did generally saw Australia as now a member of the Asia-Pacific community and one of their voices and not as an alien European voice, as we were in the past, particularly during the 'Deputy Dawg' Howard years.

The centre has also conducted many courses and continues to help build relationships in the region with other organisations and institutions that are in the same civil-military space. I congratulate the team on all their hard work. I look forward now to what this Labor government, understanding as it does multilateral security and understanding as it does the cultural, security and economic interests of our region and of the world more generally, will do with the opportunity that this seat now affords us. It is something that at the end of which all of Australia will and can be proud of. I am hopeful that people like the member for Kooyong, who perhaps understands foreign affairs a little better than Mr Abbott—and he famously acknowledged he does not—and the shadow minister, will contribute to growing the understanding within the coalition of the importance of this seat and what it can be used for in achieving a better outcome for the world, for Australia's interests and for our region.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On 19 October this year Australia secured what has been and is rightly described as a once in a generation opportunity of filling a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council. The coalition welcomes this outcome and pays tribute to the hard work of many diplomatic officials and staff in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in making this opportunity a reality. Proper respect and acknowledgement should also be paid to the former Prime Minister, the member for Griffith, Kevin Rudd, for setting this aspirational goal.

The challenge now is to make the most of this very rare opportunity. You would think that the uniqueness of this opportunity would mean that the government had a well-developed plan and a strategy for making the most of it. Regrettably, briefing notes obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and prepared by DFAT for the incoming foreign affairs minister Bob Carr reveal that this was not the case. Senator Bob Carr became Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs on 13 March. The briefing notes for him as the incoming Minister for Foreign Affairs do include a specific reference to the United Nations Security Council campaign.

I note on page 18 of these briefing notes that DFAT refers to the 'commencement of the development of a strategy, including objectives, priorities and resourcing'. That is right, 'the commencement of the development of a strategy'. You would be forgiven for wondering why wasn't there a strategy in place in the first place? Also, on page 19 of the same briefing notes, a reference is made to commencing the development of a strategy for how Australia would use its membership and how we would resource membership. I seek to table the incoming minister's briefing notes.

Leave not granted.

That is a shame; the truth is in those briefing notes. These were obtained under freedom of information and they show that there was no strategy, there was no clear policy direction on how to make use of the United Nation Security Council bid. It is a shame that the member for Page will not allow me to table these notes.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hypocrisy I call it.

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is hypocrisy. Nevertheless, these statements will support the view that the whole UN Security Council campaign was not planned—it was not strategic in its development, it was done at the last minute, it was done on the hop, it was done on the run—and that is no way to run such an important strategy. We heard from the member for Eden-Monaro what a fantastic opportunity it was to take a seat at this very important council, but that is no way to run a strategy. This may well be due to the fact that it was largely predicated on buying votes. This was demonstrated very clearly to us all by the skewing of the foreign aid budget—I will speak more on that issue shortly—but what is really concerning about the information revealed in the briefing note is that even at this late stage, and at the time of the briefing of Mr Carr as the incoming foreign minister, DFAT still did not know what the government's strategy was for how it would use its membership. Not so great planning on how we could use this once-in-a-generation opportunity.

It is also clear from the briefing notes that the Australian taxpayer would be up for more money in footing the bill to resource our United Nations Security Council membership. In terms of what a fist Australia will make of this once-in-a-generation opportunity, rather than hit the ground running, Labor's ineptitude and failure to develop a plan or strategy means that we are in danger of just hitting the ground. Much has been said about the secret costs of the bid beyond the $25 million that the government very loosely admits to. What is very clear is that an analysis of the budget ministerial statements and the portfolio budget statements going back to 2007-08 shows that there has been an incredible level of changed expenditure on foreign aid since this time. In fact we are looking at $2.9 billion, and all since the United Nations Security Council bid was announced.

As with any kind of expenditure, Australian taxpayers have a right to know are they getting value for money or not?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely!

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A critical question—I thank the member for Kooyong—that Australian taxpayers really need to ask is: how is Australia's foreign aid objectives and our foreign aid priorities being advanced by some of these notable recent expenditures? I just want to take you through some of these expenditures: $150,000 for a statue to commemorate antislavery in the Caribbean and Africa to be built in the UN Plaza in New York.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Outrageous!

Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kooyong has every right to be outraged. In terms of priority, what is AusAID doing to ensure the foreign aid money is being spent at the coalface, on the people who need it the very most?

I would like someone to explain to me how this statue will assist people in need in Africa and in the Caribbean. Let us have a look at another one: $270,000 for reviewing agriculture and fisheries management in Eritrea between 2008 and 2010. I wonder how the Australian seafood industry feel about that one after Minister Burke's recent announcement that he wants to lock away more of Australia's fishing grounds. What tangible benefits have been delivered to the Eritrean fishing industry as a result of this money? Then there was $300,000 in 2009 for membership of the Convention on Biological Diversity in Kenya. This must be one of the most expensive membership fees around. What tangible benefits has this funding allocation delivered? Maybe we will get some clarity from this one: $65 million for a giant telescope project in Chile's Atacama Desert. Other than being a very expensive gadget for ET to phone home, why was this funding allocation a priority for AusAID, and why did AusAID not make a determination that this money could be spent much more productively in our own region—for example, by tackling the TB epidemic in PNG?

If this $3 billion aid increase in foreign aid spending in Africa, the Caribbean, South-East Asia and the Pacific supposedly has nothing to do with the UN Security Council bid, what has changed so much about Australia's foreign aid priorities between 2007 and 2008? Why has there been an increase of 251 per cent in how much we are spending in Africa? That has gone up from $101 million to $354.6 million between 2007-08 and now. Equally, other than the apparent need to build a statue in New York, what has changed so much about Australia's foreign aid priorities since 2007-08 that we have increased our foreign aid spend in the Caribbean from zero to almost $48 million in 2012-13?

But the most important question is: how much has Australia's future foreign aid focus been skewed by the success of our bid? In recent estimates, under questioning from Senator Kroger, AusAID Director General Peter Baxter admitted that there had been separate buckets of funding across a range of government agencies for the delivery of projects of foreign countries which just happened to coincide with the timing of the UN Security Council bid. Mr Baxter made this admission while at the same time trying to claim that Australia's foreign aid budget had not been impacted by the Security Council bid.

But what I find really confusing about all of these statements is that this dynamic must cause significant problems for AusAID, with the apparent lack of coordination in the allocation and expenditure of consolidated revenue for the delivery of projects in foreign countries which are in effect foreign aid projects. An obvious matter of concern is that this lack of coordination creates inefficiencies in that AusAID and other government agencies could well be duplicating expenditure or acting at cross-purposes, therefore decreasing the level of Australia's foreign aid effectiveness.

It seems very clear from the analysis of the budget papers going back to 2007-08 that the level of foreign aid Australia provides in our own region has been hijacked to facilitate the Security Council bid, and it is indeed telling. It is demonstrated by the following facts: the percentage of Australia's foreign aid budget spent in the Pacific, including New Guinea, has decreased by 4.5 per cent between 2007-08 and now, and the percentage of Australia's foreign aid budget spent in East Asia, including Indonesia, has decreased by five per cent between 2007-08 and now. What we have seen since 2007-08 is a 251 per cent increase in Australia's level of aid to Africa, while we have record levels of tuberculosis infection in PNG and a failed $170 million program to combat AIDS and HIV in our nearest neighbour.

While the coalition welcomes Australia's appointment to the Security Council, it is very clear that we do not have a plan. We have splashed money all around with little or no way of design or strategy. In conclusion, the coalition urges the government to focus on our region and not to squander the opportunity that has been made available.

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is with great pleasure that I speak on the very successful bid by Australia to become a member of the United Nations Security Council. Principally, I thank the many people involved in this campaign and who have run a fabulous campaign on behalf of our nation. I think this is a moment in which it would be good for there to be a sense of national unity on what has been achieved. It is disappointing to hear a tone of political contest about unquestionably a wonderful achievement for this country, one which is consistent with Australian foreign policy as it has been exercised by both sides of politics since the formation of the UN after the Second World War.

This is the fifth occasion on which we will serve on the UN Security Council. The first was under the Chifley government. The second and third were under the Menzies government in the fifties and sixties. When we served in the 1980s, the campaign was initiated under the Fraser government but came to its fruition under the Hawke government. When we failed to win in 1996, it was a campaign initiated by the Keating government and brought to its conclusion by the Howard government. Alexander Downer in 2001 was keen to pursue the case again, but ultimately did not. In 2008, we launched the campaign which has been successful in 2012. The point of giving that history is to show that we have regularly served on the Security Council. In a sense we have just gone through the longest drought of not serving on the Security Council, but the urge to serve has been the natural instinct of conservative and Labor government alike, because Australia is a country which seeks to be an activist middle power which pulls its weight in the world.

The process of seeking membership of the Security Council and putting Australia's credentials before the world has been incredibly important for Australia's foreign policy beyond these two years. It is a very healthy act for Australia to engage in, just as it is a healthy act for everybody in this chamber to place our credentials before our constituencies every three years. Since the formation of the United Nations, effectively Australia has by and large put its credentials before the world every decade roughly. That did not happen in the seventies or the first decade of this millennium, but roughly speaking we have put our credentials before the world about each decade. That is a very healthy thing to do.

In this instance, it has helped to sharpen our foreign policy. We have learnt a lot from the process as undoubtedly we would have learnt a lot from campaigning previously, just as all of us learn about our constituencies when we put ourselves before them in the lead-up to an election. One thing we have learnt is the world is a much smaller place than it was when we last sat on the Security Council back in the mid-eighties. Also, there is no room for isolationism today. It is very important, when the opposition seeks to put forward its critique of Australia's participation, that it does not walk down a path of isolationism in the arguments made.

When I hear arguments that we should focus directly on our region, as if to take an interest in the rest of the world has no relevance to our region, that worries me. When I hear a criticism about Australia participating in the Giant Magellan Telescope in Chile—one of the major advances in astronomy in this decade and one of the most important areas of Australian expertise where Australia has led the world in astrophysics—I get worried. That is about Australia looking inwards and not pursuing its historical mandate under both persuasions of government, where we seek to engage in the world as a middle power doing our best in our own modest way to influence the world, but most importantly to understand the currents of global politics and global trade so that we can best navigate out way through as a middle power for the benefit of our country. We have done that well in terms of our engagement with Asia post-war, again under governments of both persuasions.

I can point to an area—for example, our engagement in Africa—where we have seen our development assistance increase in the context of an increasing aid budget to Africa. Our engagement in Africa now is vastly better than it was before we entered this exercise, and it will set the tone for Australia's engagement in Africa well beyond our participation on the Security Council. Why should we have an increased engagement in Africa? In fact, resource companies of Australia are playing a critical role in the resource development of Africa, which in turn is one of the key reasons that that continent is enjoying an economic emergence.

It is missing the point for Australia at a government level to not make sure we do everything we can to support our private sector engagement in Africa. The kind of development assistance we are engaging in with Africa supports that, with mining for development initiatives and scholarships—1,000 across the continent, many within the mining industry and within government so that this continent can best utilise the phenomenon it is experiencing in its economic emergence. That is in Australia's national interests. It is a good thing for Australia to do. There are Australian companies and Australian citizens who will benefit by virtue of that better engagement in Africa, and there is no doubt that our campaign for the Security Council and the exercise of placing our credentials before the world has helped enhance our engagement in Africa. There are many other examples: Latin America, Brazil and other parts of the world. This is a good thing. To start criticising it because it is beyond a three-hour shift in our time zone from Sydney is an act of isolationism. It worries me greatly in terms of where the opposition currently position themselves in foreign policy.

This leads to the second point. There are so many lessons to be learned from around the world in relation to our own region. In the Caribbean, we have an aid program—a pretty modest one at $60 million over four years—which is supporting an engagement and a level of cooperation between the Caribbean and the Pacific. It stands to reason that we are likely to learn more about the process of developing countries with small island developing states when we look at and examine the more developed small island states of the Caribbean. Similarly, when we want to see how there can be a social dividend from the resource projects in Papua New Guinea, we do learn a lot from seeing the very successful example of that in Botswana. It stands to reason that examining world's best practice across the globe is the best chance we have of implementing world's best practice at home. That is exactly why our engagement—modest as it is—in the Caribbean actually helps people in the Pacific, because we are learning lessons that can be applied in the Pacific. It is why our engagement in Africa helps Papua New Guinea. This is not rocket science. You need to look at and engage with the world if you are going to draw the best practice world lessons to apply at home and within our region. To say that to go any further than a three-hour shift in our time zone in terms of our engagement is to put a blinker on about what is going on in the world in the context of a globe today, which is much smaller, where information is being shared much more than it ever has been before.

I think it is really important for our friends on the other side of politics to understand that lesson, because this is very much the tradition of conservative politics when they have been in government. Making the isolationist argument that is being made now in the critique about the UN is running completely contrary to the way in which former conservative governments in this country have engaged with the rest of the world. It really does behove the opposition to think carefully about its own traditions in managing our foreign policy when it has had the opportunity to do so. But, unfortunately, right now the mean-spirited critique that we are seeing in relation to Australia's success in getting elected to the United Nations Security Council evidences how ill-prepared the opposition is to lead Australia's foreign policy.

That said, there is no doubt that the election of Australia to the United Nations Security Council is a wonderful moment for our country and is a wonderful achievement for Australian diplomacy. There are many people who deserve this government's thanks in bringing this about. Can I start by mentioning the two prime ministers who have been in place during the period of this campaign, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard. Kevin Rudd, obviously, began the process of seeking a seat on the Security Council and he deserves much credit in terms of what has ultimately been achieved. But there is also no doubt that Julia Gillard brought this home. I was with the Prime Minister in New York during the leaders week a few weeks ago and her performance was utterly critical to seeing Australia ultimately be elected to the Security Council.

We have had three foreign ministers during this time. Stephen Smith began the campaign and was wonderful in the work that he did. Kevin Rudd as foreign minister continued the work that he had done as Prime Minister with an amazing amount of energy and vigour which really set the tempo for all of us in terms of the way in which we went about this campaign. Of course there was Bob Carr who introduced to the world the eloquence and charm that he has shown to the people of New South Wales over the last couple of decades. That charm unquestionably hit its mark at a global level and was very important in terms of seeing the result that we were able to celebrate a couple of weeks ago.

I would like to acknowledge Dennis Richardson, the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, whose steadfast advice was so important throughout this whole process, and Gillian Bird, currently Acting Secretary, who was the relevant deputy secretary of the department for much of the time and who played such an important role as well. Within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra a task force was established for the UN Security Council campaign, and that was headed by Caroline Millar whose work was tireless in bringing about this result. She has done an amazing job. She has also participated significantly in the very successful campaign for the election of the Director-General, an Australian, of the World Intellectual Property Organization. So, Caroline Miller can now lay claim to being DFAT's prime numbers person. She deserves an enormous amount of credit and this is a great moment of satisfaction.

Can I also mention those others in the UN Security Council task force team—Blanca Amado, Bassim Blazey, Shae-Lee Burnell, Toni Caggiano, Madeline Chmura, Kate Duff, Julia Feeney, Ian Gerard, Laura Kemp, Isabelle Kremer, Michael Kulesza, Lizzie Landels, David Lewis, Rachel Lord, Emily Luck, Craig Maclachlan, Simon Mamouney, Paul Martin, Dieter Michel, Helen Mitchell, Anne Moores, Will Nankervis, Lara Nassau, Christopher Nixon, Therese O'Meally, Gaia Puleston, Hugh Robilliard, Scott Rutar, Arthur Spyrou, Jen Vanderstok and William Underwood. My thanks go to every one of those people.

In New York the campaign was spearheaded by our ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Gary Quinlan. If this is any person's triumph, it is Gary's. There is absolutely no doubt that his efforts in the final few years of this campaign were so vital in getting the result that we did. The extent to which those countries, who had committed their vote to us, ultimately stuck on the day is an enormous tribute to the sense and confidence that ambassadors in the United Nations of other countries had in our Ambassador Gary Quinlan. He deserves our nation's gratitude. He has done an amazing thing.

I would also like to acknowledge Australia's former ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations Robert Hill, a former minister in the Howard government, who played a very important role as well. Unquestionably his role, both as the permanent representative and the ambassador to UN, and also as a former minister of the Howard government, gave this campaign from the outset a bipartisan flavour and we are very grateful to the work that Robert Hill did.

I would like to acknowledge Philippa King, the deputy head of mission to the United Nations and her predecessor Andrew Goledzinowski, both of whom have done fantastic work. I would like to acknowledge the UN Security Council campaign manager in New York, Anastasia Carayanides, and her team of Chelsey Martin, Peter Stone and Sally Weston, all of whom I worked closely with. They all deserve our thanks.

They were the key people who pursued the campaign but they were supported by a range of other people in New York—both Australian posted officers and locally engaged staff who either contributed directly to the campaign or supported the general operations of Australia's UN mission in New York and Australia's consulate in New York. Each contributed to the overall success of the campaign. In that context I would again like to acknowledge Will Nankervis but, in addition to Will, Damian White, Caroline Fogarty, Sue Robertson, Jared Potter, Claire Elias, Tanisha Hewanpola, Emil Stojanovski, Ian Robinson, Dean Cottam, Lauren Patmore, Ryan Neelam and all their predecessors, plus all the locally engaged staff who worked for DFAT in New York.

The staff of the Australian consulate in New York have also carried a significant burden in the context of this campaign. I would like to acknowledge our Consul-General in New York, Phil Scanlan, and I would also like to make special mention of Rebecca Smith—Bec took great care of me during my numerous visits to New York, particularly in the week of the vote. I also acknowledge the AusAID team in New York led by Peter Versegi, the Defence team in New York led by Brian Walsh and the AFP staff in New York led by Terrance Nunn and all of their predecessors.

I visited a number of countries around the world in this campaign, and I went to a number of multilateral meetings all of which involved significant amounts of work. I would like to acknowledge Paul O'Sullivan, our High Commissioner to New Zealand during the 2011 Pacific Island Forum and all his team; our current High Commissioner to New Zealand and the Cook Islands, Michael Potts, who looked after the Pacific Island Forum this year; our then High Commissioner to Sri Lanka but in this context the Maldives, Kathy Klugman, who looked after our presence at the SAARC summit in the Maldives last year; Ambassador Patricia Holmes in Argentina, who is also the Ambassador to Uruguay, who looked after the Mercosur summit in 2011; High Commissioner Philip Kentwell in the Caribbean, who was with me during the COFCOR conference in 2012; Ambassador Lisa Filipetto, who was with me in Ethiopia during the African Union summit; and of course during leaders week this year Gary Quinlan led his team. I acknowledge all of those who provided support to those heads of mission in all of those efforts.

I would also like to acknowledge all the other heads of mission who are currently posted overseas and their teams of locally engaged staff and Australian staff, particularly in those small posts with multiple accreditations who did so much work with all the countries with which they engaged. There is so much work that goes into a campaign of this kind, and there are so many people behind the scenes in each of those posts, but all of their efforts count. They in turn are supported by a range of people at DFAT headquarters in Canberra who have worked on policy and strategy across many countries, as well as those who have worked on incoming and outgoing visits associated with the campaign.

With regard to my visits overseas, I acknowledge in particular the work of Paul Myler, former head of one of the Europe branches at DFAT and his team; Dave Sharma, head of the Africa Branch and his team; John Richardson and Rowena Thompson, who have overseen work associated with my recent visits to Central America and the Caribbean; Jennifer Rawson, who heads the Pacific Division; and the team in the Executive Branch led by Bryce Hutchesson.

The contribution of other departments has also played a very important role—Defence, AFP, the Department of Climate Change and others. I particularly acknowledge AusAID and Peter Baxter and his entire staff, both in Canberra and overseas. Finally I would like to acknowledge—

An o pposition member interjecting—

This is important, because these people played a very significant role in what is a very significant achievement for our country, and it is a moment we should be celebrating in the right spirit. I would like to acknowledge the special envoys, who did an incredible job in visiting countries around the world: Bob McMullan, who was appointed to a number of anglophone African countries and is a highly experienced and distinguished former minister and member of this place; Joanna Hewitt, a former Secretary of DAFF and DFAT deputy secretary, who looked after a number of other anglophone African countries; Bill Fisher, who was the envoy to the francophone countries and La Francophonie, an organisation including 53 francophone UN member states; Dr Russell Trood, a former Liberal Party senator who did a wonderful job not only in the week itself but in the years leading up to the vote as our special envoy to Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Caucuses; John McCarthy, the special envoy to Latin America; Neil Mules, who was the special envoy to the lusophone countries; former Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, who was our special envoy to Eritrea, Rwanda, South Sudan and Bhutan and who, again, did a wonderful job in each of those places; and Peter Tesch, who was our special envoy to Central Asia. I would also like to acknowledge Ahmed Fahour, who was our special envoy to the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Each of those people played a very significant role in this win. In acknowledging the very many that I have tonight, I hope it gives some indication of the size of the effort in getting Australia elected to the United Nations Security Council for the fifth time. In many respects, the names that I have been able to put into Hansardtonight are just the tip of the iceberg of the incredible effort that was done on behalf of our country. Those people, both those I named and all those who supported this effort, deserve Australia's thanks.

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to follow the member for Corio in this place to welcome Australia's election as a temporary member of the UN Security Council. The member for Corio is a good man and he did pay tribute to a number of people within the Department of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere who have contributed significantly to this win. He also placed a straw man before this parliament when he talked about the isolationist tendencies of the coalition. That is absolute rubbish. His comments, together with those of the member for Eden-Monaro, who made some outrageous slurs against Australia's longest serving foreign minister, Alexander Downer, and Australia's second longest serving Prime Minister, John Howard, should have been retracted because they overtly politicised this debate and gloss over the significant foreign policy achievements of the Howard government.

When we talk about multilateralism, how could we forget INTERFET and East Timor? How could we forget what we have done in Bougainville, what we have done at a multilateral level to take on the terrorists and stamp out terrorism in our region and the highest level of cooperation with our most important near neighbour, Indonesia? How could we forget the many FTAs, what we did at the Doha Round on the free trade agenda and the counter-terrorism bilaterals? I could go on. There was a significant foreign policy legacy from the Howard government, and it has been glossed over in the comments from the member for Eden-Monaro and the straw man placed before this House by the member for Corio. This coalition, both in opposition and in government, stands ready to play its part at the multilateral level in a way that is consistent with Australian values and in a manner that furthers the national interest.

We are here to pay tribute to those who contributed to our election as one of the 10 temporary members on the UN Security Council for 2013-14, where we will join the permanent five: United States, Russia, China, France and Great Britain. It was interesting that the member for Corio mentioned the contribution of former Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. One would have thought he would have voted for him, but he did not. The member for Corio referred to the three foreign ministers, Stephen Smith, Kevin Rudd and Bob Carr, who all contributed to this election campaign. The fact that we have had three foreign ministers in less than five years is a reflection of the disunity and chaos we have seen on the other side. In contrast, the coalition had the same foreign minister for nearly 12 years of government. We have seen three on the other side in less than five years. The member for Corio referred to the charm of Bob Carr. I thought he was going to bring out a bouquet of flowers. That charm did not do much for the infrastructure needs of New South Wales during the time of his premiership.

Australia is a significant country on the world stage. We are the 12th biggest donor to the United Nations. Since 1947 we have contributed more than 65,000 personnel to UN peace and security missions. This is the fifth time that Australia will be serving on the Security Council. The UN plays an important role in international security, giving mandates for major missions, whether it be Afghanistan or East Timor; in the work of its agencies, the World Food Organization and the World Health Organization; in conventions such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child; and in transnational crime. And the list goes on.

Australia needs and deserves to be at the top table when it comes to the United Nations. There is no disagreement from the coalition on that point. The fact that we have such hardworking and effective members in our diplomatic corps, who act in a non-partisan manner to execute the wishes and the policies of the government of the day, is why we have been successful in this campaign.

To the former Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Dennis Richardson; to our ambassador in New York, Gary Quinlan; to deputy secretary Gillian Bird; to the Prime Minister's Special Envoy, Joanna Hewitt; to the former ambassador in India and elsewhere, John McCarthy; to Special Envoy Bill Fisher; to head of the task force Caroline Millar; to people like Bassim Blazey; and to those on the coalition side, Tim Fischer, Robert Hill and Russell Trood, I say to you: thank you for the work that you have done to help make Australia's campaign for the UN Security Council successful.

But the reason why the coalition has raised questions about this bid is not that we should not be at the top table on the UN Security Council. Of course we should be. And, when we get there in 2013-14, we have to do a good job and there are plenty of issues like North Korea and Afghanistan and the war on terrorism and Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. They are on the table and we will have a seat at the table. It is a good thing for Australia and it is a good thing for the world. But why we have raised questions in this place and outside this place is that the manner of the government's campaign compromised our values. And it came with a cost and it is dishonest of those on the other side to ignore that reality. It is one thing to celebrate the victory, but it is another to ignore the reality of the campaign itself.

Our Governor-General was sent on an unusual 18-day tour of Africa in order to win votes. That is not a normal role for the Governor-General. We have changed our vote on Israel in the UN Security Council, in order to placate some in the Arab world, to win votes in the campaign. We have increased our aid budget and directed it at certain parts of the world in order to win votes—$5 billion goes towards our aid budget and that is growing. We have seen increasing amounts of money, hundreds and hundreds of millions, sent to the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa. Yes, we have interests there; there is no question about that. But that money has gone to those places in the world in order to curry favour. I ask: what is the Australian interest and responsibility in paying $150,000 for a statue to go outside the United Nations to commemorate the antislavery movement in the Caribbean and Africa? That statue should be there, but it does not necessarily need Australian dollars.

Our foreign minister has also changed his travel itinerary in order to win votes. He went to Mongolia and Malta ahead of India and Papua New Guinea. Papua New Guinea is our nearest neighbour, and in Papua New Guinea we have a terrible situation where 12,000 children under the age of five die every year. If I had a say, I would be saying put some of that money towards eradicating the dangers that lead to the untimely deaths of those 12,000 children. Go and visit Papua New Guinea and India before you go to Mongolia and Malta.

The other issue I want raise is Australia's participation in a conference for the Non-Aligned Movement in Iran. Australia is not a member of the Non-Aligned Movement; however, Australia decided not to send its ambassador but rather to send the Prime Minister's special envoy and our ambassador to the UN in New York to Tehran. Tehran is a state sponsor of terrorism. Tehran is hell-bent on getting a nuclear weapon. Tehran, under Ahmadinejad and the ayatollahs, is a danger to the world. But Australia closed its eyes to that reality in order to ensure that we had a high-level delegation present in Teheran at the meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement to which Australia is not a member. I say shame on the government for doing that.

I finish where I started. Australia is an important nation in the world. We are the 12th biggest contributor to the UN budget. We should have a bigger footprint in countries around the world, but instead this government has starved DFAT, seeing more than 100 people cut in the last budget alone. There is no disagreement from the coalition that having a seat at the top table, at the United Nations, is a good thing. The UN does important work to better the lives of people, whether it is health and education, whether it is the cultural sphere or whether it is the security sphere. The world is a better place with the United Nations. Australia, as a significant country, should be at the top table.

But I say to you with experience that the way this government has gone about the campaign has compromised our values. It has done so in a way that has come at a cost. If $24 million was the only expense, I would say that was money well spent. But $24 million is a fraction of what has been spent. As I said, hundreds of millions of dollars has been diverted from the aid budget. The United Nations is an important body. Australia's role in the United Nations at the top table is an important development. But please, as this government prepares our diplomats and our representatives to participate in the deliberations of the UN Security Council as a member of that body, do not compromise on our values. Stay true to our national interest and remember that in diplomacy it is values and interests that count.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I am absolutely thrilled about Australia's election to a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council and I thank everyone involved in achieving this wonderful result. In my capacity as the Chair of the UN Parliamentary Group, the UNICEF Parliamentary Association and Parliamentarians for Global Action's Australia branch, as well as being a member of the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties and having been a staff member of the UN for eight years, I have had the opportunity to see, both at close range and from the vantage point of this place, the workings of the UN and its importance in so many ways to the world. I have also witnessed the extent of the impact of Australia's interaction and involvement with the UN, how we value-add to that body and to the international community.

Of course, peacekeeping by the blue helmets is a key part of the work of the UN Security Council and is probably the aspect most well recognised by people throughout the world. Australia has a proud history of being involved with UN peacekeeping from the very first days of the UN, and Australians have served with distinction in both military and civilian roles. I am proud to have been one of those civilian peacekeepers during my time with the UN peacekeeping mission in Kosovo from 1999 to 2002.

Australia's peacekeeping and peace-building efforts can only be enhanced if the government responds positively to this week's report from the foreign affairs committee inquiry into Australia's overseas representation, in which the committee recommended that a mediation unit be established within AusAID to prevent conflict and thereby avoid the much greater costs—in human and economic terms—of humanitarian emergency aid and post-conflict reconstruction and development.

Australia's seat on the UN Security Council also ties in well with our forthcoming hosting of the G20 and membership of the G20 troika, where issues of food security and eliminating global poverty must be central to addressing the root causes of conflict and terrorism. Also important to that effort will be the UN arms trade treaty which aims to control the global trade in the small arms and light weapons that do so much damage to already fragile nations. It has been said that AK47s are the real weapons of mass destruction in the world today. Australia has played a key role in the negotiation of this treaty and will be able to use its influence on the UN Security Council to encourage members of the UN General Assembly to return to negotiations on the arms trade treaty. This is a matter that Parliamentarians for Global Action has taken up as one of its key campaigns including collecting more than 50 signatures from Australian federal MPs and senators in support of the arms trade treaty. Of course, most of the victims of the conflicts powered by small arms are women and children. Australia being on the UNSC will enable us to directly focus on UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women in armed conflict.

A further area where Australia's leadership would be pivotal is in relation to nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. Of course, Australia is already a co-chair, along with Japan, of the nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament initiative and the UN Security Council position will enable further promotion of the comprehensive test ban treaty and the fissile material cut-off treaty as well as the expansion of nuclear-weapons-free zones, but Australia can also take the opportunity presented by the UN Security Council position to move the international community towards abolition of nuclear weapons through a nuclear weapons convention.

It is also important in my view that Australia use its position on the Security Council to be a firm and constant advocate of human rights. The preamble to the UN Charter states:

We the peoples of the United Nations determined

to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and

to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and

to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and

to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom, …

The United Nations Association of Australia has recommended that a primary focus for Australia on the UN Security Council should be to strengthen the responsibility to protect doctrine. In a submission to government, the United Nations Association of Australia quotes Professor Ramesh Thakur as follows:

There is a striking depth of consensus in support of R2P principles among state representatives, UN officials and other policy and civil society actors …Yet there is also deep disquiet among many, verging on outright distrust in some key countries like Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia, about how far UN authorisation for the Libyan operation was stretched. As a result, over the next two-three years, a priority UN agenda will be to formulate an agreed set of criteria or guidelines to help the Security Council in the debate before an R2P military intervention is authorised, and a monitoring or review mechanism to ensure that the Council has an oversight role and exercises supervisory control over the operation during implementation.

The UN Association of Australia also quotes Andrew Hewett, the Executive Director of Oxfam Australia, in relation to the need to clarify the scope and application of protection of civilians. Hewett noted:

As played out in Libya we have also seen that what the Council means by ‘protection of civilians’ can have extremely wide interpretations. There has been a conflation of the protection of civilians obligations under customary and International Humanitarian Law and with the Responsibility to Protect—the latter being a political agreement among member states that has an unclear normative status. This led to considerable confusion in Libya about what actions were appropriate and allowable for NATO to take in fulfilling its mandate—and the political fallout from this experience is largely responsible for the Council’s slow response to crises along the Sudan/South Sudan border and in Syria.

The UN Association of Australia notes that, having advanced so far, there is a risk that unless the momentum is maintained these doctrines could become discredited. The UN Association argues, and I agree, that few countries are better placed than Australia to lead on these issues.

Finally, I would like to note as apposite the words of one of my predecessors as the federal member for Fremantle, the great Labor Prime Minister John Curtin. John Curtin made his last major parliamentary speech on 28 February 1945 in which he championed the new international peacekeeping organisation that would become the United Nations after the war. In that speech Curtin said:

If we are to concert with other peoples of goodwill in order to have a better world, there must be some pooling of sovereignty, some association of this country with other countries, and some agreement which, when made, should be kept. For this purpose, there must be some realization that countries cannot always have their own way, if they really wish to live in amity. There must be some give and take. That is the real test, and in wartime the test is not in the taking but in the giving. There is a price that the world must pay for peace; there is a price that it must pay for collective security. I shall not attempt to specify the price, but it does mean less nationalism, less selfishness, less race ambition. Does it not mean also, some consideration for others and a willingness to share with them a world which is, after all, good enough to give to each of us a place in it, if only all of us will observe reason and goodwill toward one another?

Those are wonderful, timeless words spoken at a time of war. They highlight an aspect of John Curtin's leadership which is perhaps not widely appreciated in this country—a commitment to the international community and to the role that Australia can play as a leading global citizen.

Recently we celebrated United Nations Day on 24 October. As the UN Secretary-General said:

Never has the United Nations been so needed. In our increasingly interconnected world, we all have something to give and something to gain by working together. Let us unite, seven billion strong, in the name of the global common good.

I welcome Australia securing a seat on the UN Security Council. We have much to contribute.

Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to address very briefly the role and the priorities for Australia within the United Nations Security Council. Let me begin with the very simple proposition that the role of the Security Council is, as it is most classically formulated under chapters VI and VII of the United Nations charter, in the preservation and maintenance of international peace, border security and good governance. In particular chapter VII of the charter gives the council responsibility to act in cases of a threat to the peace, a breach of the peace or an act of aggression.

It is my view that there should be three priorities for Australia during its time on the Security Council. Others will debate the whys and the wheres of the process over which there was a considerable series of questions for the government to answer, but looking forward there is an opportunity to express our commitment to practical international security in the following ways. Firstly, we need to focus on deep regional security issues.

In particular, I believe that means—and this is a personal view—that we should be working constructively, with China, the United States, ASEAN, India and Australia as part of this, towards a sea lanes partnership to help guarantee freedom of the seas, whether it is in the Strait of Hormuz, the Strait of Malacca or the Taiwan Strait. That is a personal goal, not a party policy. It is a long-term goal, and I think the Security Council could be an opportunity for that. Secondly, in terms of peacekeeping, we should try to export the Timor model. East Timor was an absolute model of everything we should look for in a successful peacekeeping mission. I recently returned. I saw the training, the discipline and the success of the Australians. Finally—because I will also have to speak in the House—our third area should be in countering terrorism and war crimes. I believe there is a role for the right to protect and the development of the formal Security Council mandate. I believe that we will have to take steps to deal with the war crimes which are clearly occurring in Syria now. Part of our role should be to make sure that there is a clear remit for a case to the international war crimes tribunal against the full leadership of those in Syria who are responsible. It is a short list, but it is a priority list: classic security, peacekeeping and making sure that we are protecting the human rights of those most at risk.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add my words in celebration of Australia being elected to the Security Council. What I would like to say tonight is that I am appalled that this debate in the chamber, from both sides, has degenerated into tit for tat on a level that is unworthy of us. This is not a time to try to embarrass one party or the other because of a stance they have taken at one time or another at the UN. As the parliamentary secretary, the member for Corio, quite adequately pointed out, a lot of our campaigns as Australians at the UN have crossed the political divide several times: one government has initiated a move and another one has had to carry it out. So, if we have cause to be joyful, it is because we played our part in that. If we have cause to be ashamed, we should be ashamed on both sides.

The UN is a strange invention; there is no question about that. But when Australia goes on the international stage, as it did for this seat on the Security Council, we should be looking to act as one. It was a great matter of international pride. The other reason we should be mindful of it is that 65,000 Australians—note that: 65,000 Australians—have served with the UN in either peacekeeping or security actions. They have been on UN-mandated missions, and some of them—both military and civilian—have given their lives for the UN and for Australia. To turn this debate into a tit-for-tat session is to dishonour their memory and to dishonour the role that those people played in making the world the better place that it is today.

Sure, it could be better. We all know that, and we all know the UN is wasteful and sometimes indulgent. We all know that it can be excessively bureaucratic in its procedures. We know its administration is also bureaucratic. We know that some nations do not pull their weight, either financially or by way of giving assistance to military and peacekeeping operations.

But let me put this to you, colleagues: what would be there if there wasn't a UN? Who would deliver the aid? Who would go into the drought ravaged areas and provide the relief? Who would fight the disease? Who would provide the water and the agricultural programs? Who would eliminate malaria, polio and the like? As we have known on our own doorstep, we have tuberculosis problem in the Torres Strait. One has to ask whether AusAID should be not more focused on getting that under some sort of mandate. If the state and federal governments cannot agree on it then, for heaven sake, let us bring in some outside body.

It was my privilege between September and December 2009 to go to the UN. Indeed, my colleague here at the table was at the UN the year before me in 2008. I took my role at the UN very seriously, as did my co-delegate, Annette Ellis, the former member for Canberra. We attended to our duties every day at the Australian Embassy and we went to the UN. We were each members of three committees of the UN. We debated issues on committees. We gave speeches. We represented the ambassador at functions. We participated in the argy-bargy that goes on at the UN—we were trying to put Australia's case. We took it seriously, as well we might. It was a great insight into what the UN can achieve. What I found very impressive while I was there was the quality of our young diplomats. The quality was just superb. When I hear this debate today get down to this tit-for-tat level, I think we diminish their work as well.

If we go back over the formation of the UN—back to 1946—Australia was a foundation member. The first president of the UN was an Australian, Dr Evatt. We will have been on the Security Council—with this recent appointment—five times. People who want to say, 'Why are we worried about the Security Council?' There are 193 nations in the UN and only 15 of them actually get on to the Security Council. There are five permanent members and 10 others in two rotations. We are there as one of those. If you take the five permanent ones off 193 and you get 188. We are one nation in 18 that have a seat there. That was quite exceptional. When you think about it, we are in a very awkward position in being clustered with the Europeans, because the natural instinct in Europe would be vote for a European country. For Australia to score the largest number of votes—140 votes—when you need about two-thirds of the votes to get a seat, is quite exceptional. That did not come about by just buying our way there.

Let us go back to the World Cup—not that the World Cup of soccer is on the same level as the UN. But there we spent a lot of money and got done like a dinner. This was much more than that. Yes, it is estimated that somewhere between $25 million and $45 million was spent one way and another in securing a seat. But to characterise that as bribes is silly. Much of it was additional aid money—discretionary aid money, if you like—that went to good purpose.

When you come back to those 193 countries, we in this place aspire to get to cabinet or at least be a parliamentary secretary or cabinet minister. When you get there you are one of a select few. The Security Council is, in one way, like the cabinet of the UN. So if you get there or your country gets there, it is where the business is done. That is where you do start to exercise some real influence.

For those who denigrate the UN and criticise its indulgence and wastefulness, its bureaucracy and criticise that some nations do not pull their weight financially and so on, let me ask you: what would happen if there was not the UN? Let me ask you: what might have happened in the Korean War if there had not been a UN, because that was its first action? What about the mandatory arms embargo against South Africa, peacekeeping in Cyprus when that country became totally ungovernable, the authorising of forces to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait where Australians served? Remember all that? Remember setting up war crimes tribunals at The Hague, authorising the East Timor peacekeeping force, INTERFET? You could go on about all sorts of things such as sanctions against North Korea on two occasions because of nuclear testing. There are whole range of these things that have gone on to say nothing of the countless peacekeeping and military actions that we, as Australia, have taken on—South West Africa, the Horn of Africa, in the Pacific, the Solomon Islands, in our own region, and so on. These have all been critical to Australia. As I said before, 65,000 personnel had served over that time since 1946 when Dr Evatt took up the first presidency of the UN.

We might also be interested to know that Australia is the 12th largest contributor to regular and peacekeeping funds, and we are in the top 10 for the World Health Organization, the world food fund, the UN Children's Fund and the High Commissioner for Refugees. So in other words, we are seen as being a capable and dependable international citizen. That, again, annoys me that we let this debate slip into a tit for tat exercise.

I remember one night I went to a cocktail party opened by Ban Ki-moon in the foyer of the UN building, and it was about the women of West Africa. It was very confronting with photos and paintings. I remember one particular photo that has stayed in my mind ever since. It was of a woman with a little baby in her arms, but her hand had been hacked off and it was bandage. Here was a poor woman in desperate poverty, who had probably lost her hand to some rebel group, and she was trying to suckle this little kid. It just touched my inner being. Ask yourself if you are a critic of the UN: what organisation would you put in place to look after those people? Who is going to speak for them? Who is going to go to West Africa and speak for people like that?

We played a very significant role in the funding and the organisation of the UN, and we have been there since day one. We were a foundation member. We held the first presidency. Winning a seat on the UN has been going on for the best part of four years, if not longer. It is a great tribute to Gary Quinlan, the Australian Ambassador to the UN, that he pulled this off.

It was when I was at the UN that we were starting to crank up the campaign. All the young diplomats played a part in that. I used to see them at work. I remember one day they were enormously proud. In all the years of the UN, on this particular issue—even though it was not a big issue—the five permanent members of the Security Council had never voted together. Australia was sponsoring this resolution and these young diplomats went out and, for the first time, got the five permanent members to vote for it. I remember one of the ambassadors came back and abused them. I was sitting next to the Australian Ambassador to Geneva, and I said, 'What's all that about?' 'Ah,' she said, 'a loss of face'.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Proceedings suspended from 20:01 to 20 : 43

I was congratulating the Australian Ambassador to the UN, Gary Quinlan, and his staff for their outstanding work. As I said earlier in my presentation, I think the standard of our junior diplomats at the UN is quite exceptional. They, I am sure, played extraordinary part in getting this vote of 140. I also congratulate former ambassadors like Robert Hill and ambassadors in other countries, such as the New Zealand High Commissioner, who stitched up countries to vote for us. It was really a teamwork effort right across the world, and I can understand why Australia should take great pride in it.

I would like to return to my theme that I thought it was unfortunate tonight that we let this debate degenerate into a bit of a slanging match rather than celebrating what is a marvellous victory—a victory that puts Australia at the centre of decision making for the UN and where we can exercise our influence, and, hopefully, see some reforms in the UN. We have had a long drought, waiting 27 years for this position. I think we have got to ask ourselves: after two years is up, what strategy have we got for staying in the Security Council from time to time? To finish my presentation tonight, what I would like to say is: I think we could be much more strategic. It is known that as part of the reforms of the UN, the European Community wants a seat at the UN in its own right.

Some people might think it is unwise to take it away from individual countries and have a corporate group, but I suppose that Europeans now have become semi-national is not national in their outlook. But I would support that if the countries that have been clustered with the Europeans, including Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the like, were given our own place—call it, if you like, the Pacific basin position—on the Security Council. That would mean that Australia would get two years in every eight or perhaps every 10.

Rather than saying what was wrong with the Labor Party or the coalition in their attitudes to the current win on the Security Council, why don't we work together to get a new strategy to make sure that we do not have another 27-year drought in two years time? Why don't we do some really strategic planning on what would suit Australia's interests? Why should Australia be clustered with Europeans to find our place in the world? We are in the Pacific. We are the lead nation in the Pacific. Canada is not clustered with the US or with Latin America. These countries work together in the UN. They call themselves CANZ—Canada, Australia and New Zealand. It would make a very fine combination. It would provide a leadership roles for many of those smaller Pacific nations, and it would mean that Australia, more frequently than ever before, had a place at the table where the decisions are made.