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May 21, 2012
Posted by Mike Rann
A senior official of the Bush Administration
once said to me: "The thing about you Aussies
is that you are impossible to offend. With
other nations I have to watch my 'ps and qs',
be on guard about offending sensibilities. Not
with you guys. You like straight talk and even
when we try an odd insult Australians just
laugh. And you are so irreverent!" I took this
as a compliment. Our larrikin spirit is alive
and well. Aussies don't stand on ceremony and
like to puncture pomposity with
humour.
Irreverent, yes. Irrelevant, no.
Few nations have sailed, flown or marched
further in a good cause. There is nothing more
reverential to Australians than the enduring
symbol of an Australian soldier's (we call them
diggers) 'slouch hat'. It is part of our story,
critical to our sense of identity and self
esteem. But in far flung corners of our
troubled planet the Australian digger so often
wears the blue beret of the
UN.
Australians have never been
isolationists. We did not turn away from
genocide in Cambodia, tsunamis in Asia,
earthquakes in Japan, famine in Africa,
partition in Cyprus, conflict in East Timor. We
are known for standing by our mates but
Australians also make the supreme sacrifice for
suffering strangers who have never heard of our
country. We are not neutral in the face of
crisis, calamity, terrorism or oppression.
Neutrality is not part of the Australian
psyche.
Like our kith and kin in New
Zealand we are good citizens of the UN. As
former Kiwi Prime Minister, Mike Moore and now
Ambassador to the US, said of both Australia
and New Zealand in a speech in Washington
recently: "We pay our dues and more and deploy
our people in peacekeeping and
peacemaking...This is the rent we pay for our
way of life. It is the cost of civilization...
a world without walls cannot be a world without
rules, standards and values".
Back in
1947 Australia was the first nation to
contribute UN peacekeepers, to oversee the
ceasefire between the emerging Indonesian
Republic and the Dutch colonial occupiers.
According to new Australian Foreign Minister
Bob Carr 65,000 Australians have served in more
than 50 UN and other multilateral peace
operations since 1947. Carr revealed that
Australia is now the twelfth largest
contributor to the UN's peacekeeping
budget.
In October the 193 members of
the UN will vote in a secret ballot to fill two
seats on the Security Council for a two year
term. Australia is one of three candidates in
the "Western Europe and Others" group. The
other contenders are Finland and
Luxembourg.
The last time Australia sat
at this table the Cold War had not ended. For
forty years after the Second World War the
Security Council was too often paralysed by the
veto powers of the Big Five. That has changed.
Today the Security Council has never been more
relevant or active. That's why Australia now
wants to play its part. Since Australia last
served 90 other countries have had their turn,
many of them a number of times. Japan and
Brazil have served five times during this
period. But it is not about forming a queue.
Australia, a founding member of the UN, has
much to contribute.
Last year our
Prime Minister Julia Gillard visited the UN in
New York to discuss our bid with Ban Ki-moon
and addressed 50 representatives of African
nations. She explained how helpful Australia
could be to small and medium sized countries,
pointing out that Australia was one of the top
ten contributors to key UN programs such as the
World Health Organisation, its children's fund
UNICEF and the High Commissioner for Refugees.
Since then lobbying has been intense and last
month during a visit to Singapore by Julia
Gillard, Prime Minister Lee said his country
and Australia shared a commitment to strong
global institutions such as the World Trade
Organisation, Asia Pacific Economic
Co-Operation and the International Monetary
Fund and was happy to support Australia's
bid.
As former Foreign Minister (and
former PM) Kevin Rudd has argued, Australia
brings formidable assets to the table and a
different perspective to our European
colleagues. We are a stable democracy, a medium
sized power on a vast island continent, with
the world's third largest maritime zone
strategically located in the Asia Pacific. Our
economy is in the top dozen in the world and
the fourth largest in Asia. Our military spend
is the fifth biggest in Asia.
Twenty two
of Australia's twenty four closest neighbours
are developing countries. Many are emerging
democracies, like Timor Leste where in 1999 an
Australian led intervention, sanctioned by the
Security Council, helped bring peace,
stability, independence and democracy to its
ravaged people. This year we are pleased to
celebrate with our East Timorese friends the
tenth anniversary of their independence. In
Bougainville, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon
Islands Australians have worked hard to restore
peace.
If elected Australia would join
the Security Council during a time when big
issues will be on its plate...transition in
Afghanistan, the ongoing UNSC engagement with
North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, the
continued fight against terrorism and closer to
home the preparations for a referendum on the
future of Bougainville.
In recent years
Australia has been stepping up to the plate
internationally through APEC, the G2O and other
forums just as we did under Bob Hawke's
leadership to work through the Commonwealth to
bring an end to Apartheid in South Africa and
through the UN to help sort out the mess that
was Cambodia.
Nearly 70 years ago
Australia helped draft the UN Charter.
Australia is a shareholder which has made a
big, long term investment in the UN. It's now
time to join the board. A seat at the table
will be good for Australia. It will be even
better for the UN, our region and the world.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for National Policy.
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