Mr. BEASLEY stated that part of the long agenda before the General Assembly reflected the serious and complicated divergencies which tended to divide the Powers at the present time and to encourage and perpetuate the present tension. But that agenda also reflected the wide range of the work of the Organization and its sincere and often successful endeavours to promote peace and raise standards of human welfare throughout the world.
The general debate was preparatory to the consideration in committee of each item of the agenda. Mr. Beasley felt that the sooner the General Assembly got down to detailed consideration of its agenda, the better. He would therefore merely outline the general approach of the Australian delegation to a few items which called for special attention.
The first concerned the admission of new Members. That was a question which was not appearing on the agenda for the first time. The previous year, at the instance of the Australian delegation, the General Assembly had adopted resolution 113 (II) stating that, in its opinion, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Transjordan were peace-loving States, able and willing to carry out the obligations of the Charter, and that they should therefore be admitted to membership in the United Nations. The General Assembly had asked the Security Council to reconsider those applications and had asked the permanent members of the Security Council to consult together on the matter.
Not one of those States had since been recommended by the Security Council for admission. Indeed, the admission of yet another country, Ceylon, a completely free and independent member of the British Commonwealth, with a democratic and peaceful form of government, had been vetoed by the USSR, despite the support of nine members of the Security Council.
The Australian delegation deplored the way in which the right to individual opposition had been misused in that matter. It had consistently maintained that no nation had the right, except on the grounds of qualification expressly provided in the Charter, to refuse admission to any applicant State, and that view had recently been upheld by the International Court of Justice (A/597). The Court had laid down that every application for admission should receive individual consideration on its own merits, and that no Member State could make its consent to the admission of an applicant dependent on the admission of other applicants. Nevertheless, the Australian delegation could not accept the view put forward by the Argentine delegation that the General Assembly had the right to admit to membership a nation which had secured the support of the majority of the Security Council, but not of all the five members entitled to exercise their right of veto. Such action would be contrary to Article 4 of the Charter. Australia had never sought to infringe the Charter; it had stood firmly for the observance of the Charter by great and small Powers alike even when, as in the case of the veto, the result was contrary to its wishes. Mr. Beasley supported the USSR in resisting infringement of Article 4 of the Charter, but asked that country to show the same respect for the Charter in exercising its right of veto.
Australia would propose that the General Assembly should reaffirm at the present session that the countries above-mentioned were, in its opinion, qualified for admission under the Charter and that it should call upon the Security Council to reconsider their applications in the light of the decision of the International Court of Justice.
The representative of Australia then dealt with a question in connexion with economic and social work. In its preoccupation with political problems and divergencies, which attracted attention because of their more direct effect on the maintenance of peace, the General Assembly should not overlook the importance of its less spectacular work in the economic and social fields. That work could contribute to peace by easing the want and inequality which often underlay political tension and which could be used to disturb peace.
As Mr. Malik, representative of Lebanon and President of the Economic and Social Council, had said at the opening of the last session of that body, the work of the Security Council would decrease in proportion to the success of the Economic and Social Council.
The three great economic problems confronting the world at the present time were reconstruction, the improvement of standards of living, and the control of major economic fluctuations. The Economic and Social Council, as well as its functional and regional commissions and the specialized agencies, had a gigantic task to perform; for example, it must provide for the production and distribution of food to keep pace with rising populations and to make possible higher standards of living in all countries.
Some of that work had already been tackled vigorously and realistically, but in a few cases the Council had been bogged down in political disputes, and its efforts dissipated because of inadequate or over-elaborate machinery. Thus, the study of economic fluctuations and of full employment had hardly begun. Concrete programmes of international action to meet or forestall a depression did not exist. What Governments demanded were recommendations for concrete action, and they could not be fobbed off with general conversations, nor with a mere repetition of broad principles.
Mr. Beasley stated that the International Children’s Emergency Fund had undertaken one of the most valuable tasks of the United Nations, in relieving the sufferings and needs of children in Europe and in other devastated and under-developed areas. The Australian Government had given constant support to the Fund and its contribution was second to that of the United States of America. He appealed to all Governments which had not already done so to give that work their utmost support. The Fund distributed relief, on a non-discriminatory basis, to the children of the world, the children who knew no politics and who were suffering from the effects of war and economic conditions in whose creation they had played no part. Their health, their education and their well-being were one of the surest foundations it was possible to build for future peace. The Children’s Fund and assistance to children generally throughout the world had received valuable aid since the United Nations issued its Appeal for Children. Over 16 million dollars had been raised during the year by the Appeal. It had brought vividly before the people of the whole world the conditions under which many children had to live, and the need for improving those conditions. It had brought home to the individual citizens of each country the actual work of the United Nations and its purpose and principles.
The Australian delegation therefore strongly deplored the Economic and Social Council’s decision, taken the previous month by eight votes to seven, to discontinue the Appeal at the end of the year. That decision, if sustained, would be a tragic blunder. The Australian delegation had included in the agenda of the present session an item proposing the continuance of the Appeal, so that its valuable work might be maintained.
The work of the United Nations was hampered by the fact that in two key areas of the world, Europe and Asia, no firm basis for peace had yet been worked out. It had become clearer than ever that the unjust exclusion from the German and Austrian settlements of the middle and smaller Powers who had contributed so much to victory had not helped the practical task of making a just, or indeed, any peace.
As Mr. Evatt, leader of the Australian delegation and President of the General Assembly, had stressed again the previous week, the great Powers had been unable to agree upon definitive terms of peace, either for Germany or Japan. Questions like the Italian colonies and Korea, which really belonged to the peace settlements, had already passed into the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
That process, indeed, was inevitable if the great Powers could not agree among themselves. Berlin afforded the latest example, although that dispute was merely a by-product of the general disagreement between the great Powers in relation to Germany and Japan.
In its discussions on the Italian colonies the Assembly should recognize the special weight that should be attached to the views of countries like Australia, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa, which had fought without stint in those territories from the very beginning in order to rid them of fascist domination. As Australia had pointed out at the Paris Peace Conference, their exclusion from direct participation in the discussions on those colonies up to now was completely unjustified.
The Australian delegation had always maintained that the only basis for a successful organization was to be found in applying the principles of the Charter to each problem as it arose. Each item of the agenda should be taken separately and judged on its merits, after first ascertaining the facts, if necessary, by an independent commission of inquiry. During its two years’ service on the Security Council, Australia had sought to establish those principles in the work of that body, not without success.
Those principles were no less valid in the work of the General Assembly. The Assembly was the most democratic and representative organ of the United Nations. Every Member was represented in it. There was no right to any individual veto and there was no limit to the right of discussion. But the Assembly would discharge its duties properly and fulfil the role which had been contemplated for it at San Francisco only if it strove fearlessly to apply the principles of the Charter to its agenda, each item being decided on its merits and free from the evils of automatic bloc-voting, whether the bloc might be of the East or the West, of the North or the South.
In conclusion, the representative of Australia called upon the Members of the United Nations o tackle their task with resolution. Many duties awaited them. There was no doubt of the President’s determination to adopt the most expeditious handling of the many items on the agenda, and it should be the policy of every Member to support him fully in that great task. He expressed to the General Assembly the sincere appreciation of his Government for the honour conferred upon Australia by the election of the leader of its delegation, Mr. Evatt, to the Presidency of the Assembly. Mr. Evatt had worked tirelessly since the San Francisco Conference to make a success of the great task undertaken by the United Nations, and the confidence Members had reposed in him would never be misplaced.