 Felly i ddechrau, mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio. Mae'n ddweud yw'r ffeidliadau i gael i gael i gweithio'r Llyfrgell Cymru. Felly i'r gweithio'r gweithio, Senadau Llyfrgell Llyfrgell Cymru, Senadau Ffort Tasmania, Merz Melysir Conly-Tailer, yng nghymru yng Nghymru, yng Nghymru yng Nghymru, Mr Luigi Bini, Honoury Consul of the Consulate of Italy, Ms Jenny Ellen Kennedy, Honoury Consul of the Consulate of Norway, Mr Alexios Pithas, Honoury Consul of the Consulate of Greece, Ms Kathleen Plymsol, Mr Anthony Canack, Ms Verity Plymsol-Canacova, and Mr Christian Plymsol-Canack. As a reflection of this institution's recognition of the deep history and culture of the island, the University of Tasmania acknowledges the Mujunina people, the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which this campus was built, and pays its respects to elders past and present. At the patron's dinner of the Australian Institute of International Affairs in 2005, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, the Honourable Alexander Downer, announced that the Department of Foreign Affairs would sponsor an annual Sir James Plymsol lecture, featuring an Australian or international authority on international relations. It was agreed that UTAAS would host the annual event in collaboration with the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Australian Institute of International Affairs. This lecture is part of the university's programme of thought leadership, which includes, but extends well beyond, the exchange of ideas within the academy. We have a deep commitment to stimulate and facilitate the practice of public debate and discussion. Through their inspiring and challenging presentations, those who have delivered the Sir James Plymsol annual lecture have made a significant contribution to the profile of the university as a leader in contemporary thinking on critical matters and have helped to build and enhance relationships within the community and across the globe. Sir James Plymsol was one of the most distinguished diplomats in the history of Australia's Department of External Affairs, later the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He was educated in New South Wales, receiving bachelor's degrees in economics in 1938 and arts in 1941 from the University of Sydney. After serving in the Australian Imperial Force in the Directorate of Research and Civil Affairs, Sir James was appointed to the Far Eastern Commission, tasked with overseeing the Allied Council for Japan during the occupation of that country. In 1950 he was sent as the Australian representative to the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea, where he formed a close working relationship with Sengmun Rhee, the South Korean President. Sir James was appointed as Australia's permanent representative to the United Nations in 1959 and became Australia's High Commissioner to India and Ambassador to Nepal in 1962. He was chosen to be head of the Department of External Affairs in 1965. In 1970 Sir James was appointed as Ambassador to the United States and in 1974 he became Ambassador to the USSR. He was appointed as Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and the EEC in 1977 and in 1980 became High Commissioner to the United Kingdom. His final diplomatic post was as Ambassador to Japan in 1981 and 1982. He later served as the highly popular and respected Governor of Tasmania from 1982 until his death in May 1987, only shortly after having his initial five-year term extended. This extraordinary career may have been very different. In 1947, while based in the USA, he received a letter from the Vice-Chancellor of this university, Tallleaf Hitten, who was an economic adviser to the Bank of New South Wales, advising of a vacancy for the position of Professor of Economics at the University of Tasmania. Hitten encouraged Sir James to apply, which he did. He was not successful. How wrong did the university get it? Appointments, processes were not perfect then and not always perfect now, but we do our best. He was not successful, but I think probably to the country's gain. Instead he quickly became a First Secretary in the Department of External Affairs. When he was Governor of Tasmania, Sir James developed a great interest in the university. He liked, for example, occasionally to come unannounced to the bookshop where he browsed. And he was awarded an honorary degree in early 1987, not long before he died. He gives me a great deal of pleasure to introduce Anita Plonchon, State Director for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Tasmanian Office, to welcome my speaker this evening. Thank you. Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2013 Sir James Plymsaw lecture. It is my great privilege to introduce this year's speaker on behalf of the University of Tasmania, the Tasmania branch of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Few Australians at this point could be better qualified to speak in honour of Sir James Plymsaw than Peter Varghese. As Australia's High Commissioner to India from 2009 to 2012 and now as Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, a position he's held for almost one year, Mr Varghese has followed quite directly in the eminent footsteps of Sir James, making an equally distinguished contribution to Australia's international interests. Mr Varghese has also served as an Australian diplomat in Vienna, Tokyo and Washington and as High Commissioner in Malaysia. In Canberra he has held the position of Director-General of the Office of National Assessments from 2004 to 2009 and has served as a senior adviser on international issues to the Prime Minister and in a range of senior positions within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In 2010 he was appointed an officer in the Order of Australia for distinguished service to public administration, particularly in leading reform in the Australian intelligence community and as an adviser in the areas of foreign policy and international security. Mr Varghese brings to tonight's topic the challenges of multilateralism, a perspective shaped by this breadth of experience at the coalface of Australian foreign and trade policy. Since the inception of the Plymsaw lecture series we have worked with the University of Tasmania and the Australian Institute of International Affairs to present senior international figures, diplomats, commentators and academic specialists in world affairs to a Tasmanian audience. It is my pleasure tonight to introduce Australia's most senior diplomat. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome Mr Peter Varghese. Well good evening to all of you and thank you for coming on a rather chilly Tasmanian evening. Anita thank you very much for that introduction and thank you for the work that you and the Office do representing the Department of Foreign Affairs and trade here in Tasmania, a state which has had a long history of international engagement and is ramping that up quite significantly at the moment. I'd like to acknowledge Professor David Rich, the provost of the University of Tasmania and to thank the University for the invitation extended to me this evening. Can I also acknowledge Emeritus Professor Peter Boyce in his capacity as Tasmanian president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs to other distinguished guests here this evening and extend a very special acknowledgement to the members of the Plimzel family that are joining us here this evening. For me it's a great privilege to deliver the Sir James Plimzel lecture in memory of one of Australia's most eminent diplomats and of course a highly respected Governor of Tasmania. As you've heard Sir James was a predecessor of mine as Secretary of the Department and I'm honoured to be the first among his successes to deliver this lecture. I never met James Plimzel, he had retired shortly after I joined the department but every Australian diplomat of my generation knows of him. His was not just a fine policy mind but he also possessed in large abundance important attribute for a diplomat in the field the capacity quickly to win the trust of others. People confided in Plim, he had that effect on all those he met. Plimzel was not only a predecessor of mine in Canberra but as Anita has mentioned also in New Delhi both of us in fact were appointed Secretary from the position of High Commissioner to India and each morning as I walked up the stairs of the Australian High Commission to my office I would pass his black and white photograph on the wall a face which conveyed quiet confidence, a touch of mischief and a wide openness. The topic of my speech tonight the challenges of multilateralism may sound somewhat obtuse to a wider audience. The idea of multilateralism is not after all something commonly discussed in the broader community. It's a word that daily echoes the quiet spaces of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and of course is commonly used in broader foreign policy circles but it's a slippery uncommon word on the outside. And yet it is vitally important for Australia and the global community. It is in many ways the way we make our world. Indeed in a broader context it is almost the only way we can deliberately make our world. That statement is particularly true for Australia even more so than for many other states because we belong to no natural geopolitical or cultural grouping like the European Union or the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN. Australia cannot bully or buy its place in the world. An international rules based order is therefore in our best interests and an effective multilateral system is the surest way to get there. Multilateralism is not an end in itself nor is it an alternative to bilateral relationships. Indeed the two go hand in hand. The stronger our bilateral relationships the better our chances of securing multilateral outcomes. Both are anchored in our national interests. Bilateral relationships are and will remain the core of our diplomatic statecraft. They are where our efforts to protect and advance Australia's national interests start and often finish. But foreign policy is more than the sum of our bilateral relationships. We do not live in a world of only two players. Our external environment is shaped and driven by the actions, needs and interests of nearly 200 nation states and indeed non-government and major corporate institutions that make up our world. Multilateralism is the practice by which we democratise the rules and norms of international behaviour. The process by which we weigh and value the interests and perspectives of all of our partners even as we pursue our own national interests. The UN in particular holds a special place. True its record after 70 years is mixed. Its political posturing can be frustrating. Its inability to agree on decisive action can be annoying. But for all its flaws the UN does possess a unique legitimacy and it has played a pivotal role on issues such as decolonisation which reshaped the geopolitical map of the second half of the 20th century. The truth is if we did not today have the United Nations we would have to invent it, warts and all. Before globalisation multilateralism probably didn't matter too much. In the age of empires the fate of the empire was the central concern. One might ally with another, particularly in joint defence against a third but there was little sense of a global common good of national interests that were also international interests. Operating effectively in multilateral institutions is an art and James Plimsall took to it quickly. At the end of 1945, as major Plimsall of the Australian Army with no previous diplomatic experience he was thrown in the deep end as a delegate on the inaugural meeting of the Far Eastern Commission in Washington under the critical eye of Australia's then Foreign Minister Dr H.V. Evert. Evert, impressed by Plimsall, made him Australian representative on the FEC for two years before he joined the department and went on to serve in the Australian mission in New York. There Plimsall adapted quickly to what was the new multilateral system. He developed a deep understanding of how to advance Australia's interests in what was a newly emerging form of diplomacy one in which outcomes could be achieved by working with a range of partners taking account of different interests and perspectives looking around corners as much as looking straight into eyes. Two anecdotes show his quality. While he was working in New York in 1948 to 1950 Korea became the first hot exchange of the Cold War in the still brand new United Nations then and now the institutional foundation stone of our multilateral system Plimsall worked closely alongside an American delegate some 30 years his senior John Foster Dulles co-drafting resolutions on Korea. Later in his career when Dulles was US Secretary of State and Richard Casey was Australia's Foreign Minister Casey was greatly impressed to hear Dulles address Plimsall by his first name. After the North attacked over the 38th parallel in 1950 UN forces led by the Americans were deployed on the peninsula with initial success. The international community established Unkirk the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea anticipating an early end to the war China's intervention of course ended that hope. Then only 33, Plimsall was chosen as Australia's representative on Unkirk with the rank of ambassador. Although the other delegates were all much older than Plimsall he had a critical background many of his colleagues didn't years of experience in the United Nations in dealing with Korea. The first meeting of the Committee on Korean soil was not an auspicious one in Seoul it was held by candlelight the fighting was so close critical power infrastructure had been knocked out and the lights had failed first of the Unkirk delegates the first best thing to do was to immediately relocate the committee somewhere outside of Seoul preferably across the sea of Japan. Courage is not always the most practiced of diplomatic arts but Plimsall knew he had to hold the nerve of the delegates to keep the committee seated in Korea Unkirk might need to leave Seoul but retreat from Korea would have looked bad he argued to stay put he didn't just talk to the other delegates in the room he cabled Canberra and got a message to Washington these two capitals persuaded the other member states on the committee to stay put he won the argument and the delegates stayed on in a warfraid soul to try to find a way forward. After his time in Korea Plimsall had six and a half years in Canberra often acting as secretary when Arthur Tang was away he worked closely with Casey and got to know Menzies who for a couple of years was foreign minister as well as prime minister Plimsall felt he knew Menzies mind and Menzies had great respect for Plimsall who became permanent representative in New York at the age of 42 on one occasion in 1962 when the issue of Rhodesia was coming up for the first time in the General Assembly Plimsall was trying to get a read from Canberra on how he should proceed Canberra told him that Menzies was coming through New York and he could consult the prime minister directly but when Menzies arrived Plimsall found it very hard to draw him on Rhodesia several times he tried to pin the prime minister down finally at the end of the visit when Plimsall was seeing Menzies on to the plane he asked him for guidance on Rhodesia Menzies patted Plimsall on the back and said my boy I'm glad it's you not me making that speech the multilateral system that Plimsall helped nurture has generally served the world well after all since the Second World War we have not had another global conflict we sometimes came close during the Cold War but diplomacy and our international system has acted as a vital stabiliser along the way our international economy has undergone significant reform trade has been liberalised globalisation and more open markets have proceeded to deliver more prosperity and wealth around the world particularly since the decolonisation period than ever before democracy and the rule of law are much more widespread than they were in the ashes of 1945 slowly we have learnt how to work together on newly identified problems such as environmental issues that were not on the radar in the Bretton Woods period in the Montreal protocol the speed with which we were able to negotiate the phase out of many of the highly damaging chloroflurocarbons a human invention that had been damaging the ozone layer since at least the 1950s showed a more mature world able honestly to grapple with novel issues surprisingly even during the Cold War we were as an international community able to negotiate on a range of issues even when you might have expected conflicts of interests to prevail the Antarctic Treaty an imaginative agreement that not only supports the demilitarisation of a unique and pristine environment but puts aside competing territorial claims to focus on scientific research is a fine example of effective multilateralism and one that is rightly well known in Hobart multilateral efforts have helped deliver other significant benefits human life expectancy has gone up in the time since the Second World War we have developed more effective mechanisms to help the world's poor systems that have been able to provide some relief during the worst crises faced by the poorest people around the world we have made significant progress on eradicating diseases wiping out or reducing to pockets the spread of diseases such as smallpox and polio and with a sustained push we are close to doing so with others such as tuberculosis and even malaria now much of the credit for that of course lies with national policies that promote economic growth as well as the advance in medicine and science over those years particularly the invention of antibiotics and the spread of immunisation but the part of the international system centred around the world health organisation and the aid programs that have been a feature of the post war economic restructuring have underpinned and supported scientific progress and have helped to get new medicines to the people who have needed them most the specialised agencies are in many ways the success stories of the UN system practical multilateralism at its best and in the problem solving spirit of one of the earliest examples of successful global multilateralism the 1884 meeting which established the meridian at Greenwich a vital aid for navigation in the modern world but today in 2013 we have a sense that multilateralism is under intense pressure that the ability of the multilateral system to deliver coordinated results is in decline that we need the multilateral system more than ever but it is not delivering on our expectations consider trade the doha round of trade negotiations is stalled but even though we cannot at this time see any real hope of a broad general agreement we need to take the long view the WTO itself is far from a failure its dispute settlement mechanisms allow for countries to find a binding resolution to specific trade disagreements and we are seeing now approaches to trade liberalisation negotiations even in the absence of a successful doha round such as the trade and services agreement currently under negotiation but the public struggles to hear those messages the success of the earlier Uruguay round helped create an expectation that the next grand bargain in trade a vital boost to the global economy could only be a few years away when negotiations started in doha in 2001 consider also security unsurprisingly the pledge made by the international community after the World War II through the preamble to the UN Charter was powerfully worded and I quote we the peoples of the United Nations determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war the price in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights in the dignity and worth of the human person in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom now we've made progress certainly against those eloquent aspirations and the UN system has played an important role banning the use of chemical weapons holding us back from where we could have been in terms of the spread of nuclear weapons just this year with Australia in the chair we reached agreement on an arms trade treaty the first multilateral arms control treaty in many years but why do we still live in a world in which we see what we've seen during the Syrian conflict the UN was established to defend and support global security yet still nearly 70 years after its inception war and conflict strike time and again around the world chemical weapons are still in use even a century after the horrors of the First World War and nuclear weapons continue to proliferate albeit much slower than they would otherwise have done in the absence of a global non-proliferation regime reform of the UN itself is as urgent as it ever was and as far away as any of us can imagine there is skepticism in the public mind that the international structures we have established can achieve the ends we as an international community identify as critical to our progress that skepticism extends deeply through the United Nations itself our international institutions are perhaps poorly understood but they are judged even more poorly what are the pressing issues facing the multilateral system to start with of course we have to admit that it was designed by human hands but the cracks in our international order are more than just human error part of it is a numbers game the number of participants in the international system has grown dramatically from 51 members of the United Nations in 1945 to 193 members today and from 23 members of the World Trade Organization's predecessor organization the GAT in 1947 to 159 members of the WTO today to some degree the international system is showing its age many of our structures were designed in the post-war world and we just don't live in that world anymore they have been and continue to be major shifts in the distribution of economic weight and resulting changes in the distribution of strategic power significantly a major new power China has joined key global institutions like the World Trade Organization reflecting its appreciation of the importance of trade liberalisation for its exports but the increased weight of China and other emerging economies in institutions like the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank has also brought changes on how these institutions work the multilateral system is used to giving developing countries differentiated treatment in trade and other negotiations but how much sense does that make today when we're dealing with developing countries and economies that are in the top 20 world economies also the unprecedented speed of technological progress in our time means we're constantly playing regulatory and legal catch up think about the extent to which the cyber world creates new regulatory challenges on that front Australia has recently led a successful effort to establish that international law applies to state behaviour in cyberspace chairing a UN group of governmental experts on the subject or the legal framework around bioethical issues like genetic manipulation or selection we're constantly struggling to keep up with a rapidly evolving social and technological environment why would we assume our international order be spared the same challenges driven by our interdependence the complexity and workload of multilateral institutions has changed dramatically too in 1909 there were 37 international organisations by 2000 the number had exceeded 7000 there are good multilateral institutions and those that are not so effective some that are ineffective can be explained as having a mismatch between power and participation in other words you can have an institution with many active and engaged participants but the actual power they have to affect change might be a very different calculus this goes to the heart of a basic tension in global multilateralism the mismatch between national power and global democracy global multilateralism rests on the equality of states but power resides with the handful of states with the strategic and economic reach to shape events the story of multilateralism is the constant quest to expand the reach of the former and constrain the raw power of the latter it works best when states with power, except that their broader interests are served by a system of international rules and norms which apply to all that is the perspective Australia has sought to bring to our current term on the UN Security Council the only institution with the authority to authorise the use of force in dealing with threats to international peace and security the Security Council can be seen as an attempt to reconcile the tension between power and participation its core is the P5 which have the power of veto and the privilege of permanent membership but it also includes ten non-permanent members serving two-year terms the current multilateral system is largely an invention of the United States and a clutch of Western European countries but this too is changing and changing dramatically the emergence of new powers in a multilateral world the increasing pace of globalisation the influence of non-state actors and the massive wealth transfer from west to east have altered the dynamics fundamentally emerging powers are no longer willing to accept outcomes which they perceive do not take their interests sufficiently into account some do not share the core values and interests of Australia and other Western countries some favour state sovereignty over individual rights and so are wary of interventions in national affairs some favour a greater role for the state and have shown little interest in taking a leadership role on the global stage the multilateral system's ability to deliver coordinated results is in decline as effective action no longer rests in the hands of a few relatively like-minded states but requires cooperation from an increasingly diverse and more competitive group of states the increasing influence and activity of China, India, Brazil, South Africa and a number of other players like South Korea, Egypt, Turkey, Chile, Mexico and Indonesia will continue to tilt this balance of power the United States too is adapting its approach historically the US saw broad-based multilateralism and the edifice of global public goods as squarely in its national interest this was unusual to say the least there is no historical precedent for a global hegemon to define its interests as best served by a system of multilateral rules underpinned by the ideal of global public goods for a country like Australia the post-war world would have looked very different and much for the worse if the US definition of its interests had been more narrowly framed but while the United States is still deeply committed to the international order it is also increasingly attracted to the benefit of smaller arrangements that are not necessarily universal in nature such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership the intellectual, legal and normative assumptions underpinning established practices and principles in the international system are under challenge it is not just the shifting power dynamics that are causing the multilateral system to struggle the complexity of the issues we face and the sweep of the impacts of globalisation are major factors Governments are expected to manage not only traditional security issues but a whole range of economic and transnational issues climate change, pandemics, natural disasters, migration and refugees food and water constraints, global financial turbulence, currency manipulation and so on for many of these issues anything other than a global approach will not be effective what are we to do in the face of the stresses we can see on our international order and the institutions of multilateralism we might well ask what Sir James Plinsall would have done reform is always difficult particularly when the perspectives around the world on our multilateral institutions are so divergent but we have seen progress in recent years the lightning quick evolution of the G20 into a leaders meeting in the wake of the global financial crisis and its status now as the premier institution of global economic reform replacing the G8 shows we are able to respond to changes identified tonight the growing economic weight of China is already being reflected in the international financial institutions over the course of years and decades reform is possible reform of the UN is hard to envisage but other structures have and are emerging to help us deal with security and economic challenges like the East Asia Summit, the critical institution in these areas for our own region perhaps most importantly we need to recognise that our system is imperfect and thus always subject to change and evolution the grand bargains of earlier decades like the Uruguay Round and the WTO like the Montreal Protocol and with its limitations the Kyoto Protocol may not be a model that we can always emulate even with our most pressing global issues the way in which the stalemate in the WTO has driven trade liberalisation significantly into the territory of bilateral regional and sector specific reform may well be a model we can apply to other contexts the trade and services agreement with current membership could cover more than 70% of global trade with US $3.3 trillion a year significantly it is designed to not only deliver services liberalisation to existing members but also potentially to set the standard for a future WTO negotiation the Trans-Pacific Partnership offers another model it is a regional rather than a global negotiation but still a system that relies on countries which see the benefits of ambition banding together and allows other entrants to come on board when they're willing that final point is critical we don't want to see the emergence of exclusive blocks rather we want the benefit of progress to be available to all countries such that even those not involved at the start of a negotiation can ultimately sign on climate change is a global problem but its solution may not be a grand bargain including all countries we should also look at alternatives that have more scope to deliver actual emission reductions for example a greater focus on practical mitigation initiatives and the legislative and regulatory frameworks in the countries that are the greatest polluters here is another paradox of multilateralism unilateral steps can often have large multilateral consequences we all for example want a global agreement on climate change and we all hope it can be agreed by 2015 but consider this if the US and China were to take serious unilateral steps significantly to reduce carbon emissions it would cover something like 40% of global emissions and exert a powerful gravitational pull on what the rest of the world may be willing to do my point is this multilateralism is not dead it is under immense strain and it is changing its shape and nature that's what happens under intense heat and pressure change in our international order is inevitable but in trying to find solutions to our most pressing global problems we have to keep an open mind and be prepared to consider workarounds the global solutions we find may or may not be global multilateral ones we have to look at how we engage civil society in the multilateral system because we are long past the point where the policy positions of governments were the only things that mattered we have to balance our desire for universality and common agreement with our interest in progress in the company of those nations who share our views and are willing to act and we have to have a clear view on what the UN system does well and what it does less well but the art of finding global solutions remains as important as it ever was a point James Plinsall will no doubt endorse thank you Ladies and gentlemen there is time for a few questions I think that just about exhausts the time I do want to give you my own personal thanks and to invite everyone in the audience to join us for refreshments just outside and to conclude I'd like to invite emeritus professor Peter Boyce to give the vote of thanks Thank you Provost ladies and gentlemen in thanking Peter Boyce for a very stimulating canvas of the challenges and opportunities confronting multilateralism he was measured but stimulating very authoritative and he very helpfully emphasised that we don't have to choose between multilateralism and bilateralism which I know has engaged quite a few scholars and foreign policy commentators in the past but I want to emphasise that and it may be news to some of our audience that it is quite uncommon for the permanent head of an Australian policy department to speak publicly particularly in a widely advertised lecture it's a very welcome change but it hasn't always been fashionable in the Australian textbook experience of public administration I can recall that there was a foreign minister in the 1960s who actually tried to prohibit his senior officers in the Department of Foreign Affairs from speaking publicly but there was one officer, namely the head of the department who very successfully resisted this persuasion and that was none other than Sir James Plimsall and I recall a lecture he gave in Tasmania in May 1967 it was an address to the United Nations Association which he was very happy to deliver and indeed he told me that he was happy to deliver public lectures anywhere and I think as his forthcoming biography will show this was really part of the substance of Sir James's career experience I remember the date incidentally because he came home to dinner shortly afterwards but that was I think a very appropriate illustration of the value of a senior public servant especially in the senior ranks of such a sensitive policy department as foreign affairs to be willing to talk publicly and I believe that with foreign affairs being such an important area for public discussion in a country that enjoys its middle class status that is to be welcomed and I can't think of a more appropriate person to have delivered the Sir James Plimsall lecture tonight than Peter Vargaze and Peter would you accept this very small I mean it's physically small but it's very valuable