Reception for the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations
Thursday, 10 July 2025
Government House
Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC
Bujari gamarruwa, Diyn Babana Gamarada Gadigal Ngura
As Patron of the United Nations Association of Australia (NSW Division), I welcome you in the language of the Gadigal, the Traditional Owners of this land. In this 50th NAIDOC Week anniversary, I pay my respects to all Elders, past, present and emerging.
- The Honourable Ron Hoenig MP, Minister for Local Government representing The Honourable Chris Minns MP, Premier and Parliamentarians
- Dr Patricia Jenkings, President, United Nations Association of Australia NSW Division
- The Honourable Elizabeth Evatt AC, Former Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia
- The Honourable Michael Kirby AC CMG, former Justice of the High Court of Australia
- Distinguished Guests - all
History tells us that the legacy of war is a yearning for peace, a peace which resides in idealism - that good will triumph and that there will be a future without war. The reality of peace is that it arises out of the ashes of the destruction of human, social, cultural and physical infrastructure on both sides of the conflict. History also tells us that the reality of peace is not easily achieved and that all sides to the conflict must ‘have a place at the table’.
The original 50 signatories to the United Nations Charter, signed on 26 June 1945 in San Francisco, two months before the official end of the Second World War,[1] were astute to the reality but nonetheless determined to achieve what they had signed up for - the creation of a world order without, as stated in the Preamble, ‘the scourge of war’.
At the end of the Conference, United States President, Harry S Truman, summarised the aspirations and the challenges the newly established organisation would have, in these words:
“The Charter of the United Nations … is a solid structure upon which we can build a better world. History will honour you for it ... No-one claims it is now a perfect or a final instrument. It has not been poured into any fixed mould. Changing world conditions will require readjustments ... The job will tax the moral strength and fibre of us all.”[2]
Less than a decade later, Dag Hammarskjöld, second Secretary-General of the United Nations, in an address at the University of California, addressed these challenges, at a time when the freeze of the Cold War had settled over East-West relations and there were serious conflicts in Palestine, Indo-China and Korea.
Warfare had graduated from the mechanisation of the First and the early part of the Second World War, the Secretary-General observing that: “our generation has been dangerously outdistanced by the development of our technical knowledge … it is an understatement to say that this development of … technical knowledge represents a major challenge to our civilisation.”
In this sobering context, the Secretary-General urged the “compelling need … for a wise perspective with respect to both achievements and setbacks, based on the knowledge that there is no quick road to success.” As he said, “The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, but in order to save us from hell.”[3]
Today, again - or one might say still - the geopolitical situation is volatile and fragile. Technologically, warfare is conducted in a terrifyingly advanced landscape. But 80 years on, the United Nations remains. This is why this 80th anniversary is so fundamentally important.
Notwithstanding its well-documented difficulties and the questioning of its relevance, the essential purpose of the United Nations - ‘to maintain international peace and security’[4] - is a constant. Its successes are myriad, wars have been prevented, its peacekeeping forces protect populations across the globe - as close here to Australia as Timor-Leste, and the living conditions of hundreds of millions of people have been improved.
Eighty years on is also an opportune time, in seeking to understand its continued relevance, at a time of seemingly intractable failures, to pose the question: what would happen if there was no United Nations?
In one sense the question is rhetorical, but, as Foreign Minister Penny Wong stated in her address to the United Nations in September last year: “We must remember why we built this institution.”[5] We can and should read the Charter – that is the primary source for why the United Nations exists – but I was struck by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s insight in his 1954 address. As he said: “An effort to keep the disagreements that divide our world outside the framework of the World Organisation, would lose more than it gains.” His point, in short, was that in a conflicted world, peace is a negotiated process, not an imposed one. The Treaty of Versailles had taught the world that lesson.
Australia was an active participant in the 1945 Conference and in the drafting of the Charter. Australian delegates included Attorney General and Minister for External Affairs, Dr Herbert ‘Doc’ Evatt, and Deputy Prime Minister, Frank Forde; Dr Evatt was described by the New York Times as: “the most brilliant and effective voice of the Small Powers, a leading statesman for the world’s conscience, the man who was not afraid to force liberalization of the Charter.’ [6] Indeed, Doc Evatt challenged the inclusion of the veto power in the Security Council,[7] which has been a major impediment to important peace initiatives throughout its 80-year history.
Jessie Street was Australia’s sole female representative. Prior to the conference she had met with the Women’s International Radio League, which was seeking to ensure that the equality of status of men and women was recognised in the Charter. The League’s formal request was based on the Australian Women’s Charter Committee which Jessie Street led.[8]
Australia held the first Presidency of the Security Council in 1946,[9] Presidency of the General Assembly in 1948-49[10] and was one of eight nations involved in the drafting of the UN Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
Importantly, Australia’s foreign policy is based on the rules-based order as articulated in the United Nations Charter and other UN conventions.[11]
As the legitimate guardian of the principles of international law, the United Nations can only be as effective as, and its future ensured, by the active engagement and commitment of its 193 Member States. As the Secretary-General acknowledged in last year’s adoption of its 56-action ‘Pact for the Future’: “We cannot create a future fit for our grandchildren with a system built by our grandparents.”[12]
This year, conferences, symposiums and journals around the world will critically examine the “UN at 80”. I congratulate the United Nations Association of Australia (NSW Division) for its flagship Conference in October this year: The “UN at 80: Shaping Our Future Together,” which will feature panels and presentations by eminent guest speakers among us here this evening.
As Patron of the United Nations Association of Australia (NSW Division), I thank you, your many volunteers, sponsors and partners for your continued advocacy and education in support of the ever-important work of the United Nations as you look forward to your 80th anniversary next year.
And now a toast, on this 80th anniversary of what Secretary- General, Antonio Guterres has described as a “living miracle”:[13]
The United Nations.
[1] 2 September 1945
[2] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-san-francisco-the-closing-session-the-united-nations-conference
[3] Address by Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld at University of California Convocation, Berkeley, California, Thursday, May 13, 1954: https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/1291161?ln=en&v=pdf
[4] UN Charter Article 1.
[5] https://www.foreignminister.gov.au/minister/penny-wong/speech/national-statement-united-nations-general-assembly-0
[6] New York Times, 27 June 1945, quoted in Kylie Tennant, Evatt: Politics and Justice, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1970, p. 174.
Dr H.V. Evatt and the Negotiation of the United Nations Charter by Dr Moreen Dee:
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/ONU_moreen_dee.pdf
[7] SMH, 25 June 1945: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/page/992783
[8] Jessie Street: Women’s Status in the Charter, 1945:
https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/jessie-street
[9] Norman Makin
[10] HV ‘Doc’ Evatt
[11] https://www.ag.gov.au/rights-and-protections/human-rights-and-anti-discrimination/international-human-rights-system