Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

What a pleasant and professional approach Senator Reynolds brings to her question. Australia has a long and proud history of support for multinational peacekeeping operations. Since 1947, we have provided over 65,000 personnel to more than 50 UN and other multinational peace operations. Currently we contribute 45 ADF and AFP personnel across three UN missions in the Middle East, South Sudan and Cyprus. One of those missions extends over five decades in Cyprus.

Last Thursday the United Kingdom Secretary of Defence, the Right Honourable Michael Fallon, convened the UN Peacekeeping Defence Ministerial Meeting in London. It was attended by defence ministers and senior military representatives from over 80 nations, including many from our own region, and the US Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter. It was an opportunity for the international community to review the progress which was made against pledges given at President Obama's convened peacekeeping summit of 2015 and then to also discuss how UN peacekeeping can be improved.

Our pledge in 2015 was in particular to provide strategic airlift support for the UN peacekeeping operations. I am pleased to say that since 2015 we have progressed our commitment. We are developing what is known in UN terminology as a 'letter of assistance' that will set out the requirements, the processes for Australian airlift assets to potentially be assigned to UN operations, the speed with which that might happen, the responsive levels and so on. At the conference, I announced that Australia would provide additional funding of over $1.25 million over five years to further enhance UN peace operations for e-learning training and also $90,000 to support the dissemination of UN protection of civilians guidelines and policy.

As we outlined in the 2016 defence white paper, Australia is one of the most active supporters of the United Nations, and Defence will continue to make its contributions to peacekeeping— (Time expired)