Kerry O'Brien (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I concur with the remarks Senator Eggleston made on the report of the delegates who attended the United Nations General Assembly between September and December 2010 as parliamentary advisers to the Australian permanent mission to the United Nations and thank him and his staff for the work they have done in pulling the report together. Firstly, I thank some of the staff of our mission: Ambassador Gary Quinlan and Deputy Permanent Representative Andrew Goledzinowski; councillors now having left their posts, David Windsor and Andrew Rose; particularly First Secretary Sarah de Zoeten and Shannon White, who were very helpful to me in my role on this occasion at the assembly; AusAID representative, Fleur Davies, who was tireless in her work but quite prepared to involve both Senator Eggleston and me in the role of AusAID working through the United Nations in New York; and advisers Peter Stone and Sally Weston, who were involved in a number of issues, particularly the balloting process and Australia's negotiations in those processes for the election of representatives for various committees and, indeed, from time to time each year the selection of our choices in the ballot for membership of the Security Council that I know they were involved in.

I also give thanks to Minoli Perera, who left the mission at the end of last year and I believe is now posted in Papua New Guinea, and Rebecca Smith, who provided important assistance to us both; Kelvin Birrell, who has been at the post for many years and visited my family and me in Launceston recently on his visit to Tasmania, where he intends to relocate with his partner; and, last but not least, Joy Duncan, the personal assistant to Andrew Goledzinowski, who day by day and week by week provided us with information and assistance about the variety of things that were occurring which we perhaps did not know about and may have taken an interest in. I would also like to thank Ambassador Beazley, from our embassy in Washington, which we visited for three days during our time in the United States. I would particularly like to thank Congressional Liaison Officer Elizabeth Willis and Counsellor Jan Hutton from our mission, both of whom assisted us in accessing various appointments and gave us briefings about what was going on and some of the difficulties in the bureaucracy in Washington. They assisted us in dealing with the congress, particularly the Senate, and with some of the intricacies that our embassy encountered there.

There was an illuminating by-line in the whole process. People might think the competition between members of the Senate and members of the House of Representative here is fierce. In the United States, that contest has been won by the senators. Even the size and luxurious nature of their offices demonstrates their power over the members of the house in the United States.—in size and grandeur they were not comparable. That was a lesson in itself. It is not that I am espousing that for Australia, I am just indicating that perhaps Australian senators should not be envied compared to our United States counterparts.

I also thank Fiona Way and Lyn Witheridge from the International and Community Relations Office, who were of great assistance in organising the trip from Australia for my wife and me. I am sure Alan had similar positive experiences with the office in making the arrangements. HRG, Rebekah Campbell in particular, was also of great assistance in making arrangements for my wife and me. I wish to place on record my thanks to Rebekah.

This was my second opportunity to be part of the Australian mission to the United Nations for an extended period. I attended in 2008 with Jo Gash, the member for Gilmore, and on this occasion with Senator Eggleston, from Western Australia. On both occasions my colleagues and I got along very well. While our interests were different, I think we meshed pretty well and performed as a team representing the Australian parliament.

I understand that only three members of the Australian parliament have been to the United Nations twice. Labor's Robert Ray and, I believe, former Senator Michael Baume are the other members of parliament who have been on two occasions. I suppose I am able to say I have joined that illustrious group, having had that opportunity on two occasions.

I will not go over the circumstances which led to my visit, but Ambassador Beazley suggested at a lunch that both Senator Eggleston and I attended that to have come twice must have meant that I had drawn blood on a number of occasions in the Labor caucus. He could not have been further from the truth. I was actually not expecting to come but, because of the circumstances surrounding the last election, I received a fateful phone call asking me if I was available. Funnily enough, I said yes!

The second occasion was an opportunity, having experienced the workings of the United Nations and the committee system, to point myself at a committee that I was very interested in but did not have the opportunity to fully experience on the previous occasion. That was the Fifth Committee, Adminis­trative and Budgetary, of the United Nations, which functions somewhat like a house of review on the finances of the United Nations. I am extremely thankful to Shannon White from the mission, who involved me at every stage in the process of meeting with our Canadian and New Zealand allies, with whom we have a formalised alliance at the United Nations, the CANZ Group. In those meetings, I had the pleasure of working with Veronique Pepin-Halle, Philippe Lafortune and Karen Hung, from Canada, and Paul Ballantyne, from New Zealand. They were all very welcoming and they shared their knowledge and expertise, making my role that much more pleasurable. I am extremely grateful. I was also involved with representatives from South Korea, United States, Japan and the European Union countries. They were also welcoming and very interested in the fact that Australia sent members of its parliament to participate at an integral level in the operations of our nation and the committees of the United Nations.

I need to remark on some of the young people we met at our mission. Every year, our mission and our consulate in New York engage people they describe as 'interns'. They are unpaid; they do it for the experience to work with our missions. On the last occasion, the interns were Alan Wu, Tamer Morris, Jenna Donsky, Anna Charles and Jonathan Stambolis—all excellent young Australians, very well-qualified, who performed at an extraordinarily high level. Again, they did this without pay. They were there at their own expense, and paid their own rent and travel costs. They did that, no doubt, for a CV notation but also to provide an important service to our mission in New York. I congratulate them for the work that they performed. Just as I experienced very well-credentialed Australians on my first visit, this group of five were right up to the mark. We also saw youth representative Samah Hadid, who represented Australian youth at the mission. She was there for a shorter period than the interns but acquitted herself admirably.

The United Nations, as Alan said, is far from a perfect organisation. I have been privileged in having the opportunity to experience Australia's role in the workings of the organisation and some of its successes. It is an experience that I can recommend to anyone in this place. The experience has cemented in my mind the importance of our being part of the United Nations, the importance of the UN's existence and the importance of Australia seeking a role on the Security Council.

Question agreed to.