I'm very proud today to be launching Australia's campaign for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council for 2029 and 2030. Australia is the best country on earth, and I firmly believe that our best days are ahead of us. And we have an opportunity through this potential seat on the UN Security Council to play a key role in shaping the global issues that really matter to Australians. We've been reminded in recent times of how important the interconnectedness in today's globalised world is. We are impacted by the land war that's taking place in Europe, by the conflict in the Middle East. We have been affected, of course, by COVID and other issues. We're impacted by the issue of cyber security, and, of course, one of the big challenges before the global community, which will still be there in 2029 and 2030, is how the world deals with the growth of artificial intelligence. So I think it is very much in Australia's national interest for us to be involved in the world's most important multilateral forum, the United Nations. Australia's voice on the council matters, so we can be a part of shaping some of these biggest issues which are facing the world and our nation over the next decade. And I'll always put Australia's national interests first. If elected to the Security Council, we will use our seat to advance the safety and prosperity of Australia, our region, and the world. And the challenge of climate change is another one where, particularly for our Pacific neighbours, Australia having a seat on the table will be very important. Australia is a peaceful, stable, reliable partner, and we will be advancing our case over coming days, but in the lead-up to the determination, which will take place in 2028. And today we're launching a video advocating our position as well going forward. I thank in advance the UN member states for the engagement that will take place over coming days, where it will be an opportunity to talk face to face with so many of the world's representatives. Further today, I want to announce the appointment of Siobhan McKenna as Australia's next Consul General to New York. Siobhan will be familiar to many Australians. She's currently the chair of Australia Post. In the past, she has been the chair of the National Broadband Network, and, of course, she was also very senior as the Chief Executive Officer of Broadcasting at News Corp. Siobhan is someone who will bring a great deal of financial and economic capacity to the role. Following on from our previous appointment of Heather Ridout, both strong women with strong economic credentials, to fulfil the role here in New York, which is, of course, one of the centres of global finance. And I'm very pleased that Siobhan has accepted my invitation to take up this position, which, when Heather finishes at the end of this year, Siobhan and her family will be moving to New York to take up this post. And I'm sure she will carry on from the excellent work that Heather Ridout has done. Heather, in particular, has done an extraordinary job in connecting up Australian superannuation funds, or pension funds, as they're known as here in North America, with investment opportunities, but also in promoting American investment in Australia. And I think that the role that Siobhan will play will be very positive, and is very much a merit-based appointment. And I'm pleased that she accepted the role. Happy to take some questions.
JOURNALIST: When we last launched a bid for the UN, when Kevin Rudd was Prime Minister, it was quite a big global campaign. We opened diplomatic missions in Africa, and all became quite expensive and quite expensive. Do you envisage doing anything -- Do we need to do as much this time? A, given thus far it's uncontested, and B, given domestic concerns?
PRIME MINISTER: No, I don't think that will be necessary, in part as well because of the role that we have played. I expect very strong support from Pacific countries. I expect strong support as well from our ASEAN neighbours. And, as well, we have such strong relationships across the world, across Europe, across Africa, the Middle East. And I'm confident that we will be able to pursue this position with a very modest, when it comes to financial contribution, a very modest campaign as well. We produced the video that we're launching here, but a lot of it will be on the relationships that we've been able to build. I'm in my fifth year as Prime Minister now, and I think that is an assistance as well. When you look at the rollover that occurs around the world, I have relationships that are very strong, and I'm able to talk directly to other world leaders.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, in the video, you do promote Indigenous culture. So, given that, can we revisit what I asked about yesterday?
PRIME MINISTER: I'll give you the same answers as yesterday if you'd like.
JOURNALIST: Are you concerned about the revelations that have come out about values in the child protection system in Port Hedland? Has it surprised you that there's that much dysfunction within the system? And does there need to be a stronger oversight, or more powers given to the federal government, or even an inquiry to oversee this?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we're not about to intervene against the Western Australian government.
JOURNALIST: So, so the federal government-your view is this is an issue for Western Australia, not for your government?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, this is a Western Australian issue, and, you know, I will refer you once again to Malarndirri McCarthy, our minister in Australia. It is impossible to follow, on an hour-by-hour basis, what is happening in Australia from New York. And my concentration this week will be, of course, on Australia's national interests and representing Australia here. But, of course, Indigenous disadvantage is something that, of course, I'm always concerned with. It's something, that we do in the video talk about - the pride that we have in having the oldest continuous culture on Earth, and that needs to be a source of pride. It certainly is for myself as Australia's Prime Minister.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination identified the over representation of Indigenous children in Australia's justice system and wrote to your government expressing grave concerns -education, healthcare, housing, and racial profiling of Indigenous children, leading them to be incarcerated at a higher level. So, you've talked about your delineation with the states, but you do have federal treaty obligations. What do you say to those Indigenous leaders who don't feel you've shown enough federal leadership? How are you going to change that?
PRIME MINISTER: I'll be discussing it with them back in Australia.
JOURNALIST: Sorry, just in terms of the question that I raised, it's a United Nations report. So you've leaned into -
PRIME MINISTER: Indigenous disadvantage is a fact in Australia. That is my -
JOURNALIST: My question is about leadership -
PRIME MINISTER: That is a fact, and my government continues to work on closing the gap in a range of areas in Australia.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, here in New York on Wednesday night, you will receive an award for being a global citizen. Don't you feel like a bit of a fraud accepting this award when, at home, you screwed up the response to the worst massacre since Port Arthur? In the polls, you are taking Labor to one point shy of Julia Gillard when you rolled her, and your net negatives are worse than Scott Morrison.
PRIME MINISTER: No.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you mentioned you'll be taking your case to world leaders this week. Are you able to give us an indication as to which world leaders are we meeting, and who will be speaking to?
PRIME MINISTER: We'll have a program that's still fluid, as happens at times like this. There is various leaders arriving and leaving as we speak, but I look forward to engaging across the board. And one of the benefits of the United Nations General Assembly is not just the formal meetings, and there will be some formal bilats, but also the informal engagement as well that occurs. I am looking forward on Wednesday. Prime Minister Marape will be introducing me. That's a sign of the friendship that's there between Papua New Guinea and Australia.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, I believe you saw that -
PRIME MINISTER: No, I didn't actually.
JOURNALIST: Okay, I believe you saw a demo of their new child safety -
PRIME MINISTER: Oh, sorry. I thought you meant demonstration. People with placards.
JOURNALIST: No, we didn't capture video of that one. No, the same demonstration of their new child safety features. I wonder, given what these companies are obviously capable of, are you confident that companies like Meta and TikTok and Snap are using every lever that they have to keep kids safe and enforce Australia's social media bans?
PRIME MINISTER: They need to do better. That's why we needed to strengthen the legislation. Some of these companies said, when we put in the social media ban, "Oh, how can you tell?" The truth is that many of these apps have more information about young people who are using the devices than their parents have, because they can check what they're looking at, when they're looking at it. They can check their interests and who they engage with. So they need to do better, which is why, as I said yesterday, the eSafety Commissioner has already asked for, or demanded, in accordance with the law, further information from these companies. They need to do better, quite clearly.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, if you were to ask Australians what they want the federal government to do for them, Australia seeking a spot on the UN Security Council wouldn't even make, you know, the top 10, 20, 50 issues like that that they would think would work for them. So, what would an average, ordinary punter get from Australia getting a two-year spot on the Security Council in three years' time?
PRIME MINISTER: The last time we were on the Security Council was at the time of MH17. Australia, as a direct result of having that seat on the Security Council, was able to directly intervene and to support the investigation that took place. The other thing is that Australia is not immune from what happens in the world at the moment. When it comes to fuel security, for example, it is impacting not only on the access to fuel, which, prior to Easter, there was demands from the opposition or calls that restrictions would be necessary on fuel. There were queues at petrol stations. There were people filling up jerry cans and filling up water tanks full of fuel and driving them off. There was real insecurity as well from farmers about whether they could plant their crops because they weren't sure they would have the diesel to be able to harvest those crops at the end of the season. That was having an impact on the price of goods on supermarket shelves. That's why engagement with the world matters. It matters because it makes a difference to the cost of living, to inflation, to Australians' way of life. And that is why we can't afford to not be engaged with the world, because it has a direct impact on the quality of life of Australians on a day-to-day basis. And that's why we want to engage, and that's why it's in Australia's national interest to engage as well.
JOURNALIST: PM, you say that Indigenous disadvantage is a fact. What concrete measures will you come up with to actually answer some of the worries and concerns that the UN has?
PRIME MINISTER: The work that we're doing when it comes to the remote housing program, that is a multi-billion-dollar program being rolled out. The work that we are doing in Indigenous healthcare, so, for example, providing dialysis on country, so that doesn't mean that people have to come into the capital cities, or into Alice Springs, for example. The work that we are doing on overcoming Indigenous disadvantage for our youngest Indigenous Australians. So, for example, when we did the agreement with states and territories on school funding and fair and full funding of every public school, the biggest winners of that-and one of the first agreements that we did-was for the Northern Territory. I want every Australian, regardless of who they are and where they're born, and how humble or wealthy the beginning of their lives are, to have the same opportunity. And there's nowhere you can do that more important than in education. On economic empowerment, we're providing support for Indigenous communities to engage in growth of their local economies and business engagement as well. There's a range of really successful stories, as well as the issues which are there for Indigenous Australians. The Yolngu people, for example, have been very successful at creating economic empowerment for them. The issue of Indigenous rangers is something that, yesterday, when I was in Apple, that's something that Apple is assisting in funding in Australia. What that does is provide employment, but, at the same time, what it does is obviously care for the natural environment there with benefits. There's a lot of lessons to be learnt from the oldest continuous culture on Earth, for example, with advanced work to mitigate risks of the impact of fires, for example. And I think that is recognised now. One of the things that we did was we replaced the old CDP program with a real program that has real wages for real jobs with real training. Now, we expanded that in the recent budget as well because that's been very successful at providing Indigenous Australians with those career paths. So you don't overcome intergenerational disadvantage in a year, or indeed in a term. If there were easy answers, someone would have done it. The truth is, it hasn't happened. The truth is, all governments in Australia need to do better, and that is one of the priorities that my government has.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, there's a likelihood you'll get the ear of the U.S. President at some stage through the week, either on the sidelines here or at his reception on Tuesday night. Two things: what will your message be to him about the price Australian motorists, in particular, are paying at the bowser for his war in Iran and the impact it's having on the Australian economy? And secondly, he wants AI to rip. He's got his AI czar and AI force, or whatever it is. Are you going to be strong enough to take it up to him on regulating AI?
PRIME MINISTER: I'll put Australia's national interest first of all. I have a very positive and constructive relationship with the President, and I will engage respectfully and constructively with him. But we have a view about artificial intelligence, that there needs to be appropriate safeguards put in place, and I will advocate that privately, the same as I will publicly. When it comes to the war in the Middle East, I had a good discussion with the President just weeks ago. We had a 40-minute discussion. Part of that was about the conflict in the Middle East. I repeated the position that I've put to him on a number of occasions, that we want to see de-escalation; that this is having an impact on global inflation and the global economy. And as it goes on, and with the recent issues in Saudi Arabia as well, where Minister Bowen will hopefully be able to visit this week - we obviously will check the safety and security situation there, but certainly it was planned for him to go to Riyadh-we continue to call for a de-escalation. We need to see that because this is having a massive impact on the global economy, which affects Australians.
JOURNALIST: Thanks, PM. You mentioned the MH17 case just before as part of the justification for seeking this Security Council seat. Julie Bishop also cited that when she first talked about this bid for the 29-30 position back in 2015, more than a decade ago. But the MH17 downing was an unexpected event. We couldn't have foreseen that when we were seeking the Security Council seat at the time. How can you use unexpected events like that as a justification for seeking this kind of position? And the Security Council is this month talking about AI and digital security issues. Are you saying we're not going to have solved these problems within another three or four years?
PRIME MINISTER: What I'm saying is there will be issues facing the globe in three or four years. One of those will be, no doubt, new technology. And if you had have said in 2015 that we would be having the debate now that we're having on AI, people would have seen that as being pretty prescient. If you had have said that there would be a land war in Europe that was ongoing for now, I think, you know, its fifth year, is something that was not envisaged. That was seen as something that, when the UN was created in the context of the aftermath of World War Two, that was part of the context, was - how do we stop, after two global conflicts, World War One and World War Two, how do we stop that? How do we create a multilateral body where people can engage, countries can be represented, and engage peacefully in resolution of issues through dialogue rather than through war? Now, the argument I think that Julie Bishop put is, I think, a good one. It's too late when something comes. Like, it's too late now to say, "I wish Australia had a position on the Security Council now, so we could involve in the debate that will take place about artificial intelligence." You need to have, in advance, that position on the table, and to deal with the challenges, some of which I think will be ongoing. The issue of the emergence of these new technologies, AI in 2029 will be different from the debate that is taking place in 2026. But there'll be other issues as well that we can't foresee. I don't think, if you to go to our friend's question about what Australians are thinking about today, if you had have asked a random group of Australians to find Hormuz on a world map last year, I don't know what you reckon the correct figure would have been, but I would suggest it would be under 1%, because it just wasn't an issue. And now it has been, since February 28, front and centre - not of something that is obscure or doesn't impact us, but front and centre to everything that we do - because fuel affects not just people getting from A to B, affects freight; it affects the resources sector, the agricultural sector, the capacity to engage in our economy. So I think that Australia putting ourselves forward is something I'm proud. I'm so proud to be Australian Prime Minister. And often one of the things I get frustrated by sometimes is us talking Australia down. Fortunately, no one here would ever do that.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister you're the one who always says that the war in the Middle East is far away and we can't have too much influence in that. You're actually the person who says that.
PRIME MINISTER: Thank you for the contribution. Australia punches above our weight. Punches above our weight, and we can have an impact on the world, and that's what I want to see Australia do.
JOURNALIST: Just further to that, Prime Minister, what difference, then, would an Australian seat around that table make in relation to these two wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? What would you be urging the Security Council to do on these wars that it's not already doing?
PRIME MINISTER: Australia stands very strongly for the international rule of law. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is not only immoral; it's illegal. And the United Nations does need reform, does need to be strengthened. We do need to stand up for the international rule of law. And when it comes to the Middle East conflict, I think there is a role for middle powers to engage. And Australia has done that, as we've engaged with the war in Ukraine in the coalition of the willing.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you talk about the UNSC requiring reform. If Australia does succeed in this bid, what are the kind of reforms you're talking about? How do you actually modernise an institution that's kind of locked in a post-World War Two structure? What precisely do you want to change?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, we want to make sure that the international rule of law isn't something that is regarded as something that's, if you like, optional. How do you get a frame which also reflects the modern world, where you have the emergence, with the rise of China, essentially of two superpowers, but then you have the rise of middle powers? But also, how do you give a voice to other countries as well that might be smaller? One of the things that Australia would be is a strong advocate for our Pacific family, for example. So those issues, I think, do need to be dealt with. And if Australia has a voice on the Security Council, as we did in the last time round we bid - of course, there was criticism when we bid under the former government, of which I was a part, but then the incoming government was very happy that Australia had a seat there - and I think it would enable us to be able to advocate for the positions that we care about. We're a country that has a proud record of supporting peace and security, not just in our region but around the world. We do have - not like no country is perfect - but we have, I think, a strong human rights and social justice position as well. And I think we've got a strong position to be able to advocate.
JOURNALIST: It won't be lost on a lot of Australians that Siobhan McKenna is Lachlan Murdoch's probably closest aide for a long, long time. There has been a lot of criticism around News Corp, its role and influence in government. Have you sought any assurances from her that she won't continue to lobby or deal with Mr Murdoch in advancing business interests at all?
PRIME MINISTER: Siobhan McKenna is a professional, and she will do an outstanding job representing Australia and the Australian government here in New York. And the fact that she has experience in both the private sector and the public sector is a very good thing. I'm someone who supports people being appointed on merit. Siobhan McKenna has been appointed on merit. I think she's an outstanding appointment.
