We created this institution recognizing that while our interests as countries may differ, we have shared purpose as people, because we can only solve our biggest problems together, because we determined after the last world war to prevent it ever being repeated, and because all of us can see the world as it is and. by listening to each other and by acting together, all of us can choose to shape it for the better.
Australia is home to people from all nations of the world, and we draw on the knowledge of first peoples carrying forward the oldest continuing culture on earth. We know that at this time, when its success has never been needed by more of the world’s peoples, this institution and our shared multilateral system is falling short of the commitments we have made together, and we are collectively falling further behind. There are more people displaced, and more people hungry. There is more conflict, and greater risk that a nuclear weapon could be used. The climate is changing faster than our combined efforts to stop it. Already. African agricultural productivity has dropped by a third. Within just 22 General Assemblies from now. more than 900 million additional people in sub-Saharan Africa will have less water than they need.
In many countries, including my own. floods or fires have overwhelmed communities. The most tourism-dependent region in the world, the Caribbean, faces the loss of half its tourism revenue because of extreme weather, and nowhere is the climate threat more profound than in the Pacific. Kiribati. Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands are only a few metres above sea level.
Article 1 of the Charter of the United Nations speaks to maintaining peace and security, but there can be no security if the sea itself closes in. That is why the voices and experiences of the Pacific matter. Australia, as a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, believes in Pacific sovereignty and solidarity. The connections between the first peoples of our lands and waters and the peoples of the Blue Pacific stretch back through time. We share the Pacific Ocean, and as custodians of one-fifth of the earth’s surface, we understand our duty to amplify the collective Pacific voice and to act.
We are determined to make Australia a renewable energy superpower. Within this decade. 82 per cent of Australia’s electricity generation will be renewable — a huge transformation from the 32 per cent when our Government came to office just last year. Australia is supporting the region’s transition to renewable energy, helping countries to build climate resilience and access our increased climate finance contributions. In Palau, for instance, up to a fifth of the country’s energy needs will be provided by new solar and battery storage through our Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific.
Australia is sharing our innovations in climate adaptation in the Pacific and beyond. We are supporting improved food security in some of the most vulnerable communities in the world, including with irrigation technology that has improved crop yields and reduced water usage by 30 per cent for farmers in countries including Malawi. Mozambique. South Africa. Tanzania and Zimbabwe.
Climate is far from the only crisis the world faces. The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic propelled 124 million people back into poverty, and humanitarian needs are burgeoning. Australia is part of the global response. In the last 12 months, we provided humanitarian assistance for more than 20 crises in which the United Nations requested international support. Those crises are making it harder to achieve our 17 shared Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). but they are not the only reason we are falling short, and many developing countries are rightly frustrated.
Through the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the world committed to a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At the halfway point, we have seen stagnation or regression on nearly a third of the targets, and we are not on track to meet any of them. But we ought not be tempted to abandon some goals so that we might concentrate on others. The great wisdom of the 2030 Agenda is in its recognition of the connection between different aspects of social and economic development and environmental protection — and how. together, they enable prosperity and peace.
We all invested years in negotiating this Agenda. It provides an irreplaceable framework for collective global action, and all Member States must protect it and deliver on what we have agreed. All United Nations officials, from the Secretary-General down, must guard against dilution, because the approaching climate tipping point means we simply cannot afford ongoing unsustainable development, nor will we ever maximize our development while leaving people behind or if we pick and choose between universally agreed human rights, as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The drafters of the Universal Declaration — people like Bertha Lutz of Brazil. P.C. Chang of China. Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic. H.J. Mehta of India. Eleanor Roosevelt of the United States and Jessie Street of Australia — were all seized of this simple fact: human rights apply equally to all people, no matter who you happen to be or where you happen to be born. This was a global charter for the whole human family from East to West and North to South. That was 75 years ago. and it was reaffirmed 30 years ago in the Vienna Declaration.
Yet today approximately 2.4 billion women of working age do not have equal opportunities, when we know that if we closed the gender gap in economic participation, we would add at least $12 trillion a year to global gross domestic product, in other words, generating three times more than the cost of fully achieving the SDGs.
However, to deliver the SDGs we must address systemic shortcomings and funding needs. Small island developing States, including Cabo Verde and Samoa, have advocated for reforms to international development financing to reflect the reality that income per capita is an imperfect predictor of development need. The tragic fact is that development gains can be quickly reversed by shocks such as extreme weather events. We still need income measures such as gross national income, but we also need to listen to what many countries are saying about other growing vulnerabilities they face, especially as a result of climate change. Therefore. Australia commends the work of the High-level Panel on the Development of a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index, led by the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda and the former Prime Minister of Norway. That is but one tool that can be used to improve what the international development financing architecture delivers for the most vulnerable countries in the world.
The world needs more from international financial institutions, especially the multilateral development banks. Their institutional capacity, their direct contributions and the multiplier effect of those contributions could be propelling the world much closer to realizing our shared development goals. As the Group of 20 Independent Experts Group has highlighted, to transform development, the multilateral development banks will have to transform themselves, and the window for action is closing fast.
Australia welcomes the leadership of the Prime Minister of Barbados. Mia Mottley. And we are looking at how we can partner on the Bridgetown Initiative. With 22 of our 26 nearest neighbours being developing countries, we want to contribute to a region where all our countries and peoples can thrive. Therefore, we have instituted a new development policy and rebuilt our official development assistance programme with nearly 1.7 billion additional Australian dollars over five years, providing for ongoing growth over the long term. And we have re-channelled $3 billion of our International Monetary Fund special drawing rights allocation to support vulnerable countries. Therefore, today I call on all developed countries to increase their re-channelling of special drawing rights to boost concessional longterm investment critical to resilience-building and disaster response.
Australia also recognizes that the multilateral development banks and bilateral donors need to do more to harness the capital, innovation and energy of the private sector. Therefore, last month, we launched Australian Development Investments, a 250 million Australian dollar impact investment fund to do just that. And we have launched Invested: Australia’s Southeast Asia Economic Strategy to 2040. responding to calls from our regional partners for Australia to play a bigger role in their pursuit of economic opportunity, development and growth, which will support our shared security and prosperity. All our efforts are aimed at helping countries to build their own resilience and sovereignty to ensure countries are not held back by unsustainable debt. Australia’s investments are a statement of its belief that social and economic progress are preconditions for peace, just as peace is a precondition for progress.
Peace is not a gift, and it is never a given. We are called on to play our part in diplomatic reassurance, economic development and military deterrence, all contributing to keeping and building peace.
Australia has always pursued a world where differences and disputes are settled through institutions, agreed rules and norms and not by power and size. We have been active in the United Nations peace-building agenda since its inception, focused on addressing the underlying factors that contribute to conflict. We are proud of our peace-building reform work with Angola in leading negotiations on parallel Security Council
and General Assembly resolutions (Security Council resolution 2282 (2016) and General Assembly resolution 70/262) that shaped the sustaining peace agenda. We look forward to 2025 when Australia will have a seat on the Peace-building Commission, coinciding with the review point for those resolutions.
Since the creation of the Peace-building Fund, we have been a consistent partner, and we are a top 10 donor. Our commitment to international peace and security is reflected in our history of involvement in peacekeeping — some 62 operations over more than 75 years. We remain the eleventh largest financial contributor to the overall United Nations peacekeeping budget, in addition to operational support and regional troop training. We support a strong role for regional leadership on peacekeeping.
We welcome Fiji’s proposal to establish a new Pacific peacekeeping network to strengthen our region’s capacity and cooperation, just as we welcome the call from African States for United Nations assessed contributions for African Union-led peace support operations.
Our commitment to international peace and security is why Australia seeks a seat on the Security Council for 2029-2030. and it is why we pursue Security Council reform. We must ensure greater permanent and non-permanent representation for Africa. Latin America and Asia, including permanent seats for India and Japan. And we must demand more of the permanent members, including constraints on the use of the veto.
With its special responsibility as a permanent member of the Security Council. Russia mocks the United Nations every day it continues its illegal and immoral invasion of Ukraine, just as Russia mocks the international community with its cynical games on food security that leave millions hungry, promising grain to vulnerable nations yet at the same time destroying Ukrainian grain silos along the Black Sea coast. The rest of the permanent members and all Member States must be unyielding in their response to Russia’s grave violation of Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations. If we waver in our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we will be validating the most fundamental of breaches of international law. Who might be the next victim of State-based aggression?
However, even with all the conflicts on the United Nations agenda, even as we face the existential threat of climate change, the world faces another existential threat, one risk that is consequential for every Member State. That is the risk of conflict between great Powers.
This Assembly of nations knows that strategic competition is not new. Through the course of history, it has played out across the globe. Often small countries, vast distances from major Powers, have borne the brunt of a race for dominance, with legacies of those contests casting shadows across generations. But the modern arms race forever transformed the scale of great Power competition and pushed all of humankind to the brink of Armageddon.
In 1962. one of those close calls spurred the construction of conflict prevention infrastructure between the United States and the Soviet Union: guardrails that responsibly managed Cold War competition and kept it from careering into conflict. Today’s circumstances mean we need to commit anew to building such preventive infrastructure to reduce the risk of crisis, conflict and war by accident.
The Indo-Pacific is home to unprecedented military build-up. yet transparency and strategic reassurance are lacking. Tension is rising between States with overlapping claims in the South China Sea. and disputed features have been militarized. And North Korea continues to destabilize with its ongoing nuclear weapons programme and ballistic missile launches, threatening Japan, the Republic of Korea and the broader region. When one adds dangerous encounters in the air and at sea. including between nuclear Powers, we are faced with a combination of factors that give rise to the most confronting circumstances in decades.
In short, military power is expanding, but measures to constrain military conflict are not. and there are few concrete mechanisms for averting it. So it is up to all of us to act to deploy our collective statecraft, our influence, our networks and our capabilities to minimize the risk of misunderstanding and miscalculation in order to prevent catastrophic conflict.
Peace-building today must rise to that challenge. That is why Australia is contributing to a strategic equilibrium — to help to maintain the conditions for peace through our diplomacy, while playing our part in transparent, collective deterrence of aggression. We seek to ensure that no State concludes that the benefits of conflict outweigh the risks. And we seek new measures for conflict prevention that reinforce the region’s existing economic and security architecture.
The desire for peace is seen across our region. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is determined to develop practical ways to implement the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific and play a leading role in promoting peace, security, stability and prosperity in our region. We support its aim. ASEAN is right to affirm that disputes must be resolved peacefully, in accordance with international law. including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. the ASEAN Charter and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia.
Consistent with that architecture and the need to address the growing risk of conflict. Australia welcomes President Widodo’s statement, as Chairman of the East Asia Summit, noting that the recent leaders’ meeting:
“reaffirmed the need for all EAS-participating countries to promote open channels of communication to reduce risks of misunderstanding and miscalculation and prevent conflict in our region.”
New measures to prevent great power conflict are an Australian priority, and we hope they are a priority shared by Member States throughout the General Assembly. Strategic trust is clearly in short supply. We would be wise to encourage modest steps, focused on mutual strategic reassurance, military risk-reduction measures and on opening lines of communication at all levels. Communication should never be withheld as a punishment or offered as a reward.
Given how conflict could be sparked, there would be benefit in pursuing clearer arrangements among maritime countries — all maritime countries equally — to prevent unsafe actions at sea.
And given that it is nuclear weapons that most risk catastrophe, we must work harder to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons. Our Government is renewing Australia’s enduring commitment to a world without nuclear weapons. We will continue to work with others to strengthen the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons—the cornerstone of the global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime — despite those who seek to damage it for their own gains.
This week Australia joined Japan and the Philippines to urge progress on a fissile material cutoff treaty. That would address a critical gap in our disarmament architecture, by stopping the production of material needed to create nuclear weapons. Australia is also working with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure the peaceful use of technology and combat proliferation and nuclear security risks.
Australia wants a world where no country dominates and no country is dominated. We want a world where we achieve our shared Sustainable Development Goals for people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership. We also see how all of that could be destroyed by crisis, conflict and war. Which path we choose is up to all of us. It is up to all of us to have the humility to listen. It is up to all of us to act — and act urgently — on what we hear.
We must recognize that many developing countries are inadequately served by too much of the international system — a system that must be reformed as a matter of urgency. And we must take these steps because we need everyone to know that they have a stake in the success of these United Nations — our United Nations. All countries must have a stake in the United Nations Charter and exercise their agency to uphold it. Because in today’s world, there is no zero-sum game. In today’s world, there can never be just one winner. In this age of existential threats, there is either a shared future or no future. We can choose only between shared failure or shared success. Let us all choose success.