Former diplomat addresses future of Australia and the UN

Oct 13, 2006

High profile scholar, public commentator and former diplomat Dr Alison Broinowski was the recent speaker at a CAPSTRANS seminar at the University of Wollongong which focused on Australia and the United Nations.

The title of Dr Broinowski's address was 'UNappreciated, UNderfunded, UNsustainable?' Australia and the UN. Dr Broinowski is currently a Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University.

Dr Broinowski told her audience that the United Nations is in its 61st year and is about to get a new Secretary General.

She said that among his more urgent tasks will be to renovate the New York headquarters, restructure the Secretariat, stop the genocide in Darfur, stop the US attacking Iran, stop the civil war in Iraq, negotiate a new Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and get the member states to meet the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Dr Broinowski said he can’t expect to succeed with Australia and the United States giving him much less than full support.

She questioned the future of the UN with other member states for example threatening to take the UN out of the US.

A former Australian diplomat, Dr Broinowski has written or edited nine books on aspects of the interface between Australia and Asia. Her best known books are The Yellow Lady – Australian Impressions of Asia (OUP 1992 and 1996), About Face: Asian Accounts of Australia (Scribe 2003), and Howard’s War (Scribe, 2003). Her latest book, co-written with James Wilkinson about the United Nations, is The Third Try: Can the UN Work? (Scribe Publications, 2005).

Dr Broinowski is a graduate in Arts from the University of Adelaide, and her PhD in Asian Studies is from ANU. She has lived in Japan, Burma, Iran, South Korea, and Mexico, and worked as a diplomat in Japan, the Philippines, Jordan, and New York (UN).

A frequent speaker and broadcaster, she was a co-signatory in 2003 with the ‘43 Immortals', Australian former defence chiefs, heads of Commonwealth government departments, and senior diplomats, of a public statement calling for truth in government.