Australia, 2009

I come to the Assembly, as

Australia has each year since the first session of the

General Assembly in 1946, and I come in the same

spirit, to seek solutions to the great challenges of our

age and together help give those solutions effect.

The challenges are not new. They are reflected in

the Preamble to the Charter which we, as an

international community, crafted together: “to save

succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, to

advance economic growth and social progress for all,

“to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights … in

the equal rights of men and women and of nations large

and small”. All those great undertakings were to be

reflected in a new body of international law.

Two thirds of a century later these great

international values remain constant, while the

challenges to which we apply them are subject to

continuing change. It is on the current challenges

facing the global order that I wish to speak to the

General Assembly at its sixty-fourth session today: the

global financial crisis, the unfinished business of the

Doha Round, the unfolding crisis of the planet itself,

unresolved questions of nuclear weapons 20 years after

the end of the cold war, and the future of global

governance itself.

Just on a year ago, just down the road from here,

a destructive chain of events triggered the worst global

financial crisis in three quarters of a century. It was

just on a year ago that I addressed the Assembly for the

first time, 10 days after the collapse of Lehman

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Brothers, to reflect on the challenges which lay ahead

for the proper regulation of global financial markets.

That reform programme is now under way,

through the Group of 20 (G-20), the Financial Stability

Board and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). But

there remains much work to be done to prevent the

unrestrained greed of unregulated financial markets

that has wrought such economic carnage across the

world in the past 12 months from sowing the seeds of

future financial crises.

The global financial crisis has been a wake-up

call to the international community to reform the

institutions of global governance, and a wake-up call

that our system of global governance today is in need

of radical reform. Because the truth is that the failure

of these institutions is not just a matter of concern for

Governments and for diplomats and for economists; the

price of the failure of these institutions has been paid

by working people and their families right across the

world.

The events on Wall Street spread rapidly and

indiscriminately to every corner of the globe, from

London to Lima, from Beijing to Barcelona, from

Melbourne to Mumbai, to developed and developing

economies. This global financial crisis and its ensuing

economic and employment crisis has been no respecter

of national boundaries, and no respecter of peoples.

Australia has been no exception. The global

financial crisis saw the Australian stock market fall by

55 per cent. It wiped around A$ 150 billion from the

retirement savings of Australian workers. And it led to

tens of thousands of Australians losing their jobs. We

expect more job losses to follow. Behind each of these

statistics lie the faces of working Australians, who

have seen their savings diminished, their financial

security eroded and their job security threatened.

I think of places like Liverpool in Sydney, where

the decline in its light manufacturing base has led to an

increase in unemployment of 4.5 per cent over the past

year, and where now 19,000 local people are without

work; like the tourist destination of Cairns in far North

Queensland, where unemployment has risen by 3.7 per

cent over the past year, meaning that 13,300 people are

now out of work in that area; and like the south-eastern

suburbs of Perth, where unemployment has risen by

3.3 per cent in the past year, leaving 12,800 people in

that community without a job as well.

In communities like those across Australia the

global recession is hurting in very real ways, just as in

communities like them across the world the global

recession is hurting in very real ways. We can never

forget these men, these women, and their families, as

we seek to find a path out of this global recession.

While our global economic system failed

comprehensively to prevent the crisis, the G-20

Governments have rallied to reduce the damage and

prevent systemic collapse. Through the agency of the

G-20, for the first time involving heads of Government

from the major developed and developing economies,

Governments acted in concert to provide around

$13.6 trillion-worth of support to directly stabilize the

global financial system; to inject $5.5 trillion-worth of

fiscal stimulus into the global economy; to provide

$1.1 trillion in resources to the international financial

institutions, to give markets confidence that any

subsequent collapses could be dealt with; to develop

also an integrated framework of toxic asset

management to repair the balance sheets of many

major banks; and to initiate a comprehensive financial

markets reform programme, through the Financial

Stability Board.

The IMF has assessed that these extraordinary

interventions succeeded in breaking the fall in what

was an economic crisis spiralling out of control.

But the truth is that our global economic recovery

is far from certain, and that many twists and turns lie

ahead. Furthermore, the institutions of global economic

governance are facing new challenges. First, the

financial market reform programme must be completed

and implemented to prevent a future crisis. Secondly,

in anticipation of global economic recovery, we must

agree on a framework for the coordinated withdrawal

of our emergency interventions. And, thirdly, and most

critically, we must articulate a new framework for

sustainable future economic growth, a framework that

does not simply return to business as usual, based on

unsustainable financial imbalances and excessive

consumption, fuelled by consumer and corporate debt

and irresponsible risk-taking in systemically significant

financial institutions.

One of the failures of the old growth model of the

last decade was the lack of effective global economic

coordination. This allowed imbalances to grow

unchecked and financial institutions to remain

inadequately supervised. As we move towards

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recovery, we must build a framework to foster both

growth and balance in the global economy. The IMF

estimates that effectively implemented coordination

between major economies could add significantly to

global growth — an additional 10 per cent to global

output, or around $6 trillion over a five-year period. To

achieve this coordination dividend the G-20 will need

to build on the structures of cooperation that have been

established during the crisis and apply them to the new

challenges of the global recovery.

In Pittsburgh we have a historic opportunity to

agree on a framework to deliver effective coordination

of our national economic policies. This framework

should have four key elements.

First, G-20 members should agree on a common

objective to achieve balanced and sustainable growth.

Secondly, G-20 members should outline their own

national economic strategy and identify how it

contributes to our common objectives. Thirdly, the IMF

should analyse individual national economic plans to

determine whether they are consistent and collectively

adequate to achieve sustainable and balanced global

growth. And, fourthly, this report should be submitted

to the G-20 to form the basis of peer review, which

would identify specific risks and vulnerabilities for the

future. This framework should be consistent with, and

an important input to, the development of a set of

global principles, such as the current proposal from

Germany for a charter for sustainable economic

activity.

The other great global challenge of our age is

climate change. With only 74 days remaining until

Copenhagen, the Governments of the world are far

from agreement. Enough has been said about the need

for action on climate change, but as of today not

enough action has been taken. Our collective political

will to date has not been adequate to meet the task. For

too long discussions between developed and

developing countries have degenerated into mutual

recrimination, with developing countries accusing

developed countries of failing to meet their obligations,

given their undeniable responsibility for the bulk of

greenhouse gas emissions already in the atmosphere,

and developed countries warning the major emerging

economies that unless they take action global warming

will increase to unacceptable levels, based on emerging

economy emissions alone.

The trouble is that both arguments are right. What

is required globally is the leadership to embrace this

truth and respond to it accordingly, because the truth is

that all our Governments need to reach beyond their

self-interests and instead fashion a grand bargain

between the developed and the developing countries of

the world: a grand bargain on climate change which

embraces both historical and future responsibility; a

grand bargain which is anchored in the science of

climate change and the need to keep temperature rises

within 2 degrees Celsius to avoid catastrophic climate

change; a grand bargain embracing the three great

challenges of climate change which we are yet to

resolve.

Those three challenges are to answer these

questions: what binding targets and commitments must

developed and developing countries adopt to keep

temperature rises within 2 degrees Celsius; what public

and private climate change financing arrangements are

necessary to support the mitigation and adaptation

measures we need to implement in the future; and what

technology transfer do we need to undertake in

renewable energy, in carbon capture and storage, in

energy efficiency and in the avoidance of deforestation

and forest degradation to bring about real reductions in

greenhouse gas emissions?

In the period ahead, the grand bargain we must

strike needs to resolve all three of those challenges, as

each is inextricably dependent on the other. We must

make use of all available mechanisms for international

cooperation, including the Major Economies Forum

and the G-20, to achieve success in the negotiations.

For us all, this will be a test of our leadership,

leadership which seeks to lift our collective vision

beyond today and instead focus on the needs of

tomorrow.

But time is short. As Chair of the Pacific Islands

Forum, I know that time is already running out for the

island States of the Pacific. Coastal inundation is not a

prospect; it is a reality. Fifty per cent of the population

of those island States reside within 1.5 km of the coast.

The South Pacific is part of the human face of climate

change. And that is why Australia, nationally,

regionally and globally, stands ready to play its part in

acting on this great moral, environmental and

economic challenge of our time.

This Organization was born in the shadow of

nuclear weapons; that shadow remains today. One truth

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remains absolutely clear: the proliferation of nuclear

weapons can never make any country more secure. The

nuclear test by North Korea this year was rightly

condemned across the international community. It

reiterates that the only path to safety is through the

eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. Australia is

encouraged by the commitment of the United States

and Russia to further reduce their nuclear arsenals, but

the international community must also progress the

broader disarmament and non-proliferation agenda.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has played a

crucial role in limiting the spread of nuclear weapons,

but the Treaty today is under grave challenge. We must

work to ensure that its global security benefits are

reinforced by a successful Review Conference in 2010.

To reinvigorate global consensus and activism ahead of

that Conference and beyond, Australia and Japan last

year established the International Commission on

Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, which in

the next few months will produce its final report. Its aim

is to chart a practical and realistic course to achieve a

strengthened non-proliferation disarmament regime,

leading to the ultimate elimination of nuclear arsenals.

Tomorrow’s Security Council summit on

non-proliferation and disarmament is important for us

all. We must not miss the opportunity it offers to

summon the political resolve to move towards a

nuclear-weapons-free world.

The challenges of global governance extend

beyond the global financial crisis, climate change and

the threat of nuclear weapons. The realization of the

Millennium Development Goals is fundamental to the

elimination of extreme poverty. It remains an obscenity

that in 2009, after an age of unprecedented global

prosperity, 1.5 billion of our fellow human beings are

living in extreme poverty. That is a core reason why

the Australian Government has committed to

increasing official development assistance to 0.5 per

cent of gross national income, to help close the

development gap which has been widening in many

Pacific island countries, while also helping, where

possible, to deal with poverty elsewhere in Asia,

Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Parallel to the Millennium Development Goals,

the Doha Development Round has now been going for

eight years. This is too long. The negotiating gap

between us all is not wide, but the deficit in political

will to conclude the Round seems vast. As the world

searches for a new growth formula to sustain long-term

economic recovery, surely Doha represents one critical

element? Australia, as one of the lead negotiators

within the Doha Round, remains ready to help bridge

the negotiating gap.

Let the Assembly also not forget the continuing

critical work of the United Nations across the full

spectrum of global governance — issues concerning

international peacekeeping operations, humanitarian

operations, food security, women, health, children and

refugees — all hallmarks of a civilized global order.

The United Nations is not a place; it is not an

institution. The United Nations is us, “We, the peoples

of the United Nations”, as the Charter begins. It is we

who must find solutions to the problems we face, build

consensus around those solutions, and implement them.

This Organization had its beginnings not in an act of

will, though will was certainly needed, but in an act of

imagination, an idea of what the world should and

could be. This is the challenge of leadership: to

imagine a future worth having and then craft that

vision into a practical and present reality.

That was the challenge to which our forebears

rose in 1945. That is the challenge to which our

generation must now rise for the future.