Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

Yes. I thank the member for Murray for having moved this important motion. As a former UN staff member and the co-founder of the UN parliamentary group, of which I am now a deputy chair—and Dr Stone is the chair—I am very happy to second the motion.

The parliament will mark the 70th anniversary of the signing of the UN charter with a special ceremony on Thursday. Australia of course played a key role in the founding of the UN. Prime Minister John Curtin, one of my predecessors in the federal seat of Fremantle, before his untimely death in July 1945, championed the new international peacemaking organisation which would become the United Nations. In his last major parliamentary speech, on 28 February 1945, Curtin said:

If we are to concert with other peoples of good will in order to have a better world, there must be some pooling of sovereignty, some association of this country with other countries, and some agreement, which, when made, should be kept … There is a price that the world must pay for peace; there is a price that it must pay for collective security. I shall not attempt to specify the price, but it does mean less nationalism, less selfishness, less race ambition. Does it not mean also some consideration for others and a willingness to share with them a world which is, after all, good enough to give each of us a place in it, if only all of us will observe reason and goodwill towards one another?

Australia was fortunate that the Minister for External Affairs responsible for inaugurating national foreign policy was, according to Gareth Evans, 'Australia's first genuine internationalist'. Dr HV Evatt—'Doc' Evatt—played a crucial role in the negotiation of the UN Charter. He argued that the prime purpose of the UN should be to provide collective security for all nations by setting in place procedures to achieve speedy, peaceful conflict resolution and to promote economic and social justice. He advocated unstintingly the rights and opportunities of smaller countries through his work to raise the status of the UN General Assembly; to restrict the dominance of the permanent five members of the Security Council; and to expand the goals of the UN Economic and Social Council.

Evatt's support for decolonisation led to the incorporation of a trusteeship clause in the UN Charter. He succeeded in strengthening the functions of the assembly by securing agreement that its powers include all matters within the scope of the charter unless they are already on the council's agenda, and by widening the UN's economic and social goals to include promoting higher standards of living, full employment and economic and social progress as well as universal respect for human rights. In recognition of the significance of Evatt's contribution Australia was elected as one of the first non-permanent members of the Security Council. Evatt was also elected as the third chair of the UN General Assembly, a position he was occupying at the time of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Another formidable Australian force in establishing the UN and the visibility of women in the international arena was Jessie Street. She was the sole woman on the Australian delegation to the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in 1945. With other women, she was instrumental in having a permanent Commission on the Status of Women established within the United Nations, separate from the Human Rights Commission. Jessie was its first vice president. As such she was closely involved with the drafting of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. She and her CSW colleagues were successful in changing the first draft of the declaration, which had opened with the statement, 'All men are brothers', and referred to the rights of 'man'. Jessie always said, 'if you don't refer expressly to women, they will be excluded from rights'. Hence, the 'brotherhood' opening was dropped. In its place, Article 1 begins: 'All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.'

Jessie Street strongly believed in the UN as an instrument of peace but she was also keenly aware that the UN is only as good as the states, the governments which are its members, allow it to be. The tragic failings sometimes attributed to the UN, such as Srebrenica and Rwanda, can usually be traced back to intransigence, action or inaction on the part of one or more powerful member states.

Standing up to powerful member states may well have cost the second Secretary-General of the UN, Dag Hammarskjold, his life. Hammarskjold was mysteriously killed in a plane crash in the Congo in September 1961. New evidence presented in a book by Susan Williams titled Who Killed Hammarskjold: The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa, has led to the establishment by the UN of an independent panel of experts to investigate Hammarskjold's death. I hope it will lead to some belated justice for this brilliant and courageous man.

In the meantime, on this special 70th anniversary of the UN Charter, I would like to quote the inspirational words Dag Hammarskjold said to UN staff just nine days before he was killed:

It is false pride to register and to boast to the world about the importance of one's work, but it is false humility, and finally just as destructive, not to recognise and recognise with gratitude that one's work has a sense. Let us avoid the second fallacy as carefully as the first, and let us work in the conviction that our work has a meaning beyond the narrow individual and has meant something for humankind.

Debate adjourned.

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