 Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, Director of Crawford School, Madam Conversationalist, Geraldine, and ladies and gentlemen. And let me begin by thanking Gareth for the invitation to deliver this year's Crawford aeration, named, I'm aware, in honour of Sir John Crawford, an outstanding public servant, economist and university leader. I've titled the lecture, The Leadership We Need Sustainable Development Challenges. And I know that over the next couple of days, the Crawford Australian Leadership Forum will focus on the need for leadership in many spheres, from the economic policy trade and investment to global governance and security, migration, the disruptive impacts of technology, and much more. All of these spheres are encompassed in the big and bold 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which was agreed by world leaders at the United Nations in New York in 2015. It seeks to eradicate poverty in all its forms and to create a more peaceful, inclusive and sustainable world. Now that short description alone makes it clear that this agenda is a very large and wide one. My lecture today is going to cover it in the context of other development-related agendas which the UN launched around the same time, the challenges and the way of realising the aspirations of these very ambitious agendas and the leadership and the actions which could move us towards them and to achieving the sustainable development goals which lie at the heart of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the other targets set across the other agendas. So to the new global agendas, I've referred to agendas plural as the 2031 is complemented by a number of other global agreements reached over a quite remarkable two years of development-related agenda setting in 2015 and 16. Perhaps the best known of the others is the Paris Climate Agreement reached in December 2015, a major milestone in the global effort to fight climate change and it took less than a year to enter into force which is exceptionally rapid for international agreements. Other agreements from that biennium include the Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, very important to development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Financing for Development, the Outcome of the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul, the New Urban Agenda which came out of Habitat 3 in Quito last year and also the New York Declaration from the UN Summit on Refugees and Migrants. If we take all these together, they do call for transformation in the ways we think about and do development and I highlight just a very few respects. First, there is a significant lift in ambition from the past. The 2030 agenda is about getting to zero over 15 years in areas like eradicating poverty and hunger and ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The Millennium Development Goals, MDGs for short which preceded the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs for short, were not so ambitious but what they did show is that determined action to meet targets and key areas like health and education will get results. Remains to be seen whether significant progress can be achieved across the much broader canvas of the SDGs with their 17 goals, 169 targets and at last count 132 indicators which comprehensively cover economic and social development, protection of the environment and peace and governance. As a former government leader, I will appreciate that if the focus is on everything, it often ends up being on nothing or achieving little. So you could legitimately anticipate the question would it have been better to paint the broad picture and express the big vision and then focus on fewer targets? To which my answer would be yes but that's not what UN member states decided. Second way in which this agenda is different and more transformational, it does emphasise the importance of increasing resilience to shocks. Now those shocks could be economic, they could be social, health, disaster or conflict related. All such shocks can drive people back below a poverty line but in many cases so much can be done to limit the risk of the shocks occurring and to limit their effects if they do. So investing upfront in broad risk reduction and conflict prevention is a high priority in the new agenda. Thirdly, the global development agenda is now very clear that achieving sustainable development does require peaceful and inclusive societies, justice for all and effective accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels and there is a much quoted phrase in the new agenda that says there can be no sustainable development without peace and no peace without sustainable development. This is the first time a UN development agenda has set goals and targets around the governance and the capacities needed to build peaceful and inclusive societies. Really goals in that area as actually across all the SDGs will be very challenging for the 1.4 billion people living in contexts which can be described as fragile. That number was forecast to grow to 1.9 billion by 2030 and the Secretary General's report to the World Humanitarian Summit. So that bleak outlook of the numbers living in fragile contexts increasing by half a billion has to be overcome to meet the vision of the 2030 agenda. Fourth way in which the new agenda is different, meeting the goals of all these broad new global agendas will require the mobilisation of unprecedented volumes of finance and all possible sources need to be drawn on. The Addis Ababa Financing for Development Conference action agenda pointed out that we will need public and private money. We will need domestic and international money and I always add development and environmental finance as well. And I'll come back to the theme of leadership around finance later in the lecture. So let me move now to just a few of the challenges which stand in the way of realising the new agendas and why in the third part of the lecture I'll come back to the huge importance of leadership. Let's start with the challenge of eradicating extreme poverty. Very challenging but we have to give it our best shot. As of now more than three quarters of a billion people, mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, continue to live in extreme poverty which is currently defined as living on less than $1.90 US a day. Ending that will require tackling persistent inequalities and discrimination. It will require growth which is inclusive of everybody, women, young people, people with disabilities, indigenous people, members of minorities of all kinds. It will also require peace and stability. All of that speaks to the size of the challenge. Second major challenge, the ongoing global economic uncertainties and volatility which seems to be the new normal. The latest UN World Economic Situation and Prospects report estimated that the world economy expanded by only 2.2% last year, the slowest rate of growth was the global financial crisis. A pick up is forecast over the next couple of years but a range of uncertainties and downside risks remain. Without steady growth at higher levels than that, it isn't possible for low income countries to achieve the ambitions of the new global agendas and the progress of the middle and upper middle income developing countries would be constrained as well. Then, and related to that, there is the jobs challenge. The global economy is just not generating enough jobs and livelihoods. The ILO expects global unemployment to rise to 5.8% this year, adding another 3.4 million people to the ranks of the jobless. And this jobs deficit is felt particularly by the world's youth. At 1.8 billion strong, the current cohort of adolescents and youth is the largest our world has ever known. Most of these young people live in developing countries where their aspirations, their energy and their innovation could result in significant demographic dividends if serious investment in their capacities and in opportunities for them is made. A converse is also true. Unemployed, alienated and disengaged youth are not a recipe for peace and harmony in any society, not a mine, not in yours, not in anyone's. Nor can we right now entirely predict the disruptive impact of current technological change on the job market, including the scale of replacement of human labour by robots. It is of course true that past waves of technological innovation were also greeted by concerns about what work people would do in the future, but to a large extent new areas of work kept emerging. But are there limits to that? And will societies need to rethink how to ensure minimum basic incomes for all in the absence of sufficient work? Already we see Finland piloting a universal basic income with the stated goals of cutting red tape and cutting poverty and unemployment significantly, and some provinces and cities and other developed countries are doing the same trials. Then in my list of challenges, there's the impact of natural disasters including climate change. The scale of the weather-related disasters of recent years is the face of the foreseeable future as climate change bites. Even if the high ambition of the Paris Agreement is realised and that ambition was to keep the global temperature rise to below 2 degrees and ideally to below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, we can expect worsening weather for decades to come. So everything possible has to be done to support countries to adapt to that outlook, particularly the poorest and the most vulnerable. In extremis, as we know, dramatic weather events bring severe dislocation and death, whether from flooding and cyclones or from years of drought. Take Hurricane Matthew in Haiti last October when more than 1,000 people died, or the 260,000 who died in the famine which hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012, half of whom were under five-year-old children. So much greater resilience to adverse events like this has to be met. Urbanisation is also compounding disaster risks, both by concentrating many more people together and because the poor live in the most vulnerable locations within cities. I'll always remember my visits to informal settlements which cascade down the steep hillsides of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti. Those at the bottom of the ravine are the first to be flooded and with a major earthquake like that of January 2010 in which close to a quarter of a million people died, the poorly constructed homes of the poor are literally falling down the slopes. My fifth challenge, the number of violent conflicts which are generating massive displacement and creating very high levels of need. When I went to UNDP as administrator in April 2009, I used to get briefing notes which told me that the number of armed conflicts in the world had fallen. Well, they wouldn't write that today. As from around 2011, a lot began to change. Uprisings and protracted conflicts in the Arab states region, of course, account for some of the increase. And as well on the African continent, Mali and Central African Republic descended into deadly conflict in 2012 and South Sudan in late 2013. Elsewhere, the insurgency in Afghanistan continues as does deadly conflict in eastern Ukraine. And that long list of troubled countries could be added too. As well, we must take into account which are experiencing waves of terrorism fueled by violent extremism to which developed countries clearly are not immune and we all mourn with London and Paris and Brussels and again a sad long list. And then there are the countries which are experiencing deadly crime waves. Late last year, for example, I visited El Salvador and Honduras which are both experiencing a scourge of armed violence. All gangs there, the so-called Maras, make the lives of people miserable and dangerous in most places. And persistence of poverty at scale is still a significant problem. Earlier this year, the UN drew attention to the threat of famine in four countries. In Somalia, Yemen, South Sudan and in Nigeria in the northeast. Those four have one deadly attribute in common protracted conflict which has seen so many people displaced and unable to produce their own food or earn the money they need to buy it. In Somalia, the crisis of conflict has been compounded by three years of drought producing dangerous levels of food insecurity even in the relatively stable areas. All of these settings generate significant displacement. Indeed, we're currently witnessing the world's largest ever forced displacement crisis. At more than 65 million people that represents a larger number than at the end of the Second World War. 21.3 million or about a third of those people are refugees. The far greater number are the internally displaced. And I would note that there is a huge inequity in coverage of the two groupings. Refugees are at least covered by an international convention. The IDPs, the internally displaced people, are not. And often the treatment is very, very different. Meeting all the relief needs of the displaced has been putting a huge burden on foreign aid budgets. Of course, the greater pressures still on communities who are caught up in the events, their economies and human development can be set back for many, many years. And then the impacts have felt not only in the country which is the source of the conflict but by the neighbours as well. And one looks at how the economies of Jordan and Lebanon have struggled since the Syria crisis began and their public services are under strain. To put the crisis for Lebanon in context for Kiwi audience, I always say, imagine a country which is about the size of the Waikato region with a population similar to that of New Zealand which is hosting equivalent to a quarter of its population as refugees. Would we be as tolerant as Lebanon? And I think it is a tribute to the tolerance of people in the neighbouring countries that mayhem has not broken out. Finally in my list of challenges that I have to step up to, the geopolitical environment in which we are working to advance sustainable development and build the solidarity it requires is not entirely conducive at the moment. This may be the understatement of the year. These are times of both significant geopolitical polarisation and of mixed support for multilateralism and social development assistance. Deep divisions on the UN Security Council are preventing it from acting decisively in ways which might bring a number of deadly conflicts to an end. So that piece which is required for sustainable development remains elusive for many and the hopes of realising the global goals and agendas in the countries at the epicenters of these events will be a pipe dream. Elsewhere in some countries national interests are being very much put to the fore and the easiest budgets to cut are always those for international development assistance. Within those budgets the easiest to slice are those for the UN agencies. As for the most part they do not have significant domestic constituencies but rather they do depend on governments placing a high value on multilateral action. All these adverse trends are combining to make the UN a less effective force than it needs to be to give global leadership on the big agendas. So now I come to the leadership and the actions which are required to meet the sustainable development challenge. Leadership required at every level from the global to the regional to the national to the local to the individual. It must encompass both the public and the private sectors NGOs and civil societies and please take it that academic and research institutions are implicitly covered across public sector, private also and of course civil society. So to start with the global level the multilateral system has to be fit for purpose to lead on sustainable development. The UN's development system undergoes continual reform. It is regarded as a key partner by developing countries and on these agendas there are now rather more than 100 countries which have asked their local UN country team of agencies please support us to mainstream this agenda into our national strategies, policies, plans and budgets. Everyone knows that if you don't get something into the national plan on the budget it ain't going to happen and you wouldn't have much to show on a progress report. Countries are asking the UN agencies for expertise innovative ways of tackling problems sharing knowledge, building capacities and advocating for the resources required to move ahead. I do think though that the peace and security work of the UN will need a lot of rethinking if it is to make a meaningful contribution. A current focus of discussion in UN circles is how to prevent conflict and sustain peace both so critical to sustainable development but clearly that's not a short-term endeavour. Achieving peace and stability needs rather more than investments in early warning systems for spotting tensions and sending off mediators or peacekeepers when the peace is actually broken down. For it is surely no accident whatsoever that many states which lapse into these deadly internal conflicts have high levels of poverty and or inequitable distribution of wealth and power, governance which isn't inclusive and or doesn't reach all corners of the land and or an absence of the rule of law. These are all development challenges and they retire long-term focus, attention and investment and change. Obviously more holistic thinking and action across the UN system would help address the nexus across these issues but that is not uncontroversial among the member states with a number unwilling to see more links built between the development, the humanitarian, the human rights, the peace, the political and the security pillars of the system. So I come to national leadership because actually no amount of leadership at the global level can ever substitute for what must happen at the national level. Governments do need to take the Sustainable Development Agenda seriously and implement the measures required to realise them. This new agenda is markedly different from that of the Millennium Development Goals which applied only to developing countries and that was a source of some resentment because developing countries said, well you've written an agenda about us, what about you? And so this agenda is a universal agenda applying to countries rich and poor. Many countries across all income categories are giving priority to implementing it and I find some of the most inspiring actions coming from the countries that face the most challenges like Somalia which is in the process of finalising its first national development plan in more than three decades and has fully aligned it with the Sustainable Development Goals. It goes without saying that the Paris Climate Agreement is also a universal agenda and all parties to it are expected to make national commitments to climate action and to implement them. In this respect it is unquestionably disappointing to see the United States disengage from the Paris process but it's also inspiring to see individual states within the US, its cities, businesses, NGOs and local communities stepping up to the challenge. I'm under no illusion as to how difficult leadership on climate issues is. In my time as New Zealand Prime Minister it was a relatively simple matter to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 2002. The hard grind lay in the implementation. Most people seem to agree that the government should do something about climate change but many objected to having to change to energy efficient light bulbs. This apparently was a symptom of nanny state and they objected to paying more for the petrol. The agriculture sector which generates around 50% of New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions was particularly resistant but leadership requires putting the case over and over and over again and endeavouring to take the greater number of people with you. I also believe very strongly that leadership by governments on sustainable development and climate action is based on whole of government thinking and action. As the objective is to try to build models of growth and development which are inclusive and don't wreck the environment. Ideally those efforts need to be led from the very top of government to put real weight behind ensuring that all ministries and sectors pull in the same direction. In the course of implementing what were the much less ambitious development goals in developing countries these approaches which ran across governments, across silos, across sectors were absolutely vital for making any progress. Take for example what may present as a health crisis like a high rate of maternal mortality. It will probably have its roots in forced so-called early marriage. Girls being withdrawn from school lack of transport to health facilities and or an inability to pay for care. All of those issues need to be addressed to drive down maternal mortality. It's not one swing of the wheel, it's a complex of issues. Another example, we can't preserve forests if agriculture and logging are allowed to intrude on them at will. Protected areas need to be enforced. Capacities for that have to be built. Support for the small holders to intensify production on already cleared land is very important. And getting broad agreement from companies to deforestation free supply chains is absolutely vital. So very broad groups of policymakers and stakeholders have to come together to find and implement solutions to these complex and intellect problems. At the domestic level all governments can prioritise designing policy and regulation which will steer investment towards sustainable solutions. Phasing out the fossil fuel subsidies, making renewable energy investment attractive are very good examples of what's needed. And so is the establishment of the rule of law which gives citizens and other stakeholders confidence in the future of their investments. Whether they be those of the smallest micro-entrepreneur or those of major investors. Catalytic funding to support building those capacities should be a priority for official development assistance and I'll come back to that point in a moment. I want to also emphasise how important leadership at the sub-national government level is as well. As often that is where the planning power and the funding to make a difference lie. Australia as a federal state knows that well. The various international organisations for local government are working very hard to bring their memberships up to speed with what is required and I particularly note the work of the Commonwealth Local Government Forum in that respect. Now let me come to the need for leadership and action on financing for sustainable development. Money isn't everything but it always helps and in this case rather a lot of money helps. It does require to achieve the SDGs and implement the Paris Agreement, domestic resource mobilisation and private investment on a mega scale. International public finance like Development Aid can help particularly if it is used to catalyse other investment. And I think that that and other aspects of the case for official development assistance need to be made much more forcefully in donor countries like mine and yours. That requires leadership and we need more countries to step up on development assistance, not step out. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNCTAD, estimated that in order to achieve the sustainable development goals by 2030 the annual investments to be made in developing countries would need to total $3.3 to $4.5 trillion a year every year from now to 2030. They then calculated that the current funding gap was $2.5 trillion a year. Well clearly public funding isn't going to bridge that gap. And this is why if you come back to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development it is so emphatic that all sources must be drawn on. Domestic and international, public and private, developmental and environmental. And indeed environmental public funding including that being mobilised for climate action is likely to quickly outgrow the volume of traditional official development assistance. I think the international public funding can be catalytic in supporting the development of institutions, capacities, good policy and enabling environments all of which facilitate access to other funding. For example, support for developing tax assessment and audit capacity helps countries collect the taxes they adieu, particularly from those international companies which specialise in paying no tax to anybody. Official development assistance will continue to matter a lot, especially for the least developed in the low income countries, the fragile states and the small island developing states. I also find it encouraging to see the leadership shown on finance by the international and regional financial institutions. The IMF, the World Bank and the range of regional development banks. They're all aligning their investment strategies with the SDGs and with the Paris Agreement. And they've been instrumental in showing how you could leverage from the billions they've traditionally had to invest to the trillions required for the new global agendas. The development finance landscape is dynamic, very fast evolving, with many new finance providers public and private emerging. There is the South-South Cooperation which is growing in importance across concessional financing and grants and complemented by trade and investment. There is, for example, China's mega initiative of Belt and Road which does have the potential to accelerate development in countries within its scope. But I do believe it also needs to be consciously designed to get human and sustainable development impact. There are people who live along the corridors of the highways and the rail. Then let me add onto this explicitly a word about the role of the private sector which is indispensable. These agendas will not be achieved without significant private sector investment. How business does business and the scale of the investments will make or break the global agendas. But we do see tremendous examples of leadership. For example, on climate action. And let me come back to the zero deforestation and supply chains. In the area for palm oil, the commitments which the companies who buy palm oil have made to zero deforestation supply chains now are estimated to cover up to 90% of the global buying power, which is very significant. We see so many businesses which assess their future being in sustainable practice and investment preferring to be on the right side of history and to do the right thing by society and the environment. And let me end what I have to say about leadership by saying it must also come from parliaments, from all levels of the civil society. Voice is very important in advancing global agendas and keeping governments to them. Parliaments scrutinise and approve budgets and government priorities. Civil society has an indispensable role of advocacy. I think the media has a duty to inform. Universities, research institutions have expertise in high status. Their voice counts a lot as well. So my conclusion, the challenges to achieving sustainable development include currently entrenched poverty and significant inequalities. These horrible protracted conflicts and the huge forced displacement of people, economic and political volatility, the major jobs deficit, the urgent need to adapt to demographic trends and the severe exposure of many countries and communities to severe natural disasters which can only be exacerbated by climate change. All of these challenges called for bold approaches to building a better world. And thanks to the far-reaching global agreements of the past couple of years, we have good roadmaps for that. The alternative to following them is to put up with a world characterised by even more turmoil and instability than the one we know today. I do think that is avoidable or at the least can be mitigated with resolute action which is why it is so imperative for leaders to build support for the steps required to meet the Sustainable Development Challenge. Thank you. They liked you. Do you mind if I call you Helen? Thank you. We'll look. Thank you. Am I? Oh, sorry. So sorry. Apologise. Without further ado, allow me to introduce Geraldine Dug. One of Australia's greatest broadcasters in journalism. So I think most of you will realise that Geraldine is the host of Radio Nationals Saturday Extra. She's also been awarded a Churchill Fellowship and in 2003 was recognised with an officer in the Order of Australia for services to community and the media. So please make them welcome and thank you, Geraldine. Again, I'm sorry. Yes, I don't normally want to get on air earlier than I'm actually scheduled for, so I do apologise whilst Chancellor. Look, that was a marvellous overview and I'm going to try to give until about 4.30. And if there are people absolutely waving at me, we'll try to do a couple of questions, but I've been given the job, a very happy job of chatting until about 4.30. But I would like to cover the two strands I thought as your own personal experiences of power and influence because I think people would be very unhappy with me if I didn't ask you some of that. In fact, I was hoping we could have played some of the clips from my year with Helen, which wowed them at the Sydney Film Festivals, but it wasn't actually possible. So I do hope it's coming to Canberra. We haven't actually settled that yet, whether it is, but I think there's quite a lot of personal observations I'd like to get from you. And then this, the bigger, more ambitious aims that you talk about, and I think one of the things will be very interesting about this dialogue that you're here for, is to end up reminding ourselves of what extraordinary times we're living in as Alan Gingel says, this is different from what Australia has known before, whether we all remind ourselves this is the case, or whether we can see ways of circuit-breaking that are helpful, which is what I think you're hinting at. In fact, there's a great line you have here, which I read that you said that life is too short to be pessimistic when you listed all of that description there. I wonder if, have you always thought that, or have you learned it? I'd be very keen to know how you do maintain a sense that constructive change is possible when you list some of those, that list emerges from you. I think if I hadn't been of a basically optimistic nature, I'd never have gone into politics. I'd still be talking about it at the University of Auckland where I started my career. And secondly, I probably would have given up long ago and learnt to play golf, which I always said was for people much older than me. So, no, I think, you know, I have the attitude that every day you can wake up and make a difference. And I've been privileged to have jobs all my life where I felt I can wake up every day and make a difference. And make a difference obviously at the national level in Kiwi politics, but then going to UNDP, being able to work with this very, very wide range of all developing countries and what could be added, what could be the added value of the UN to their development. So I really believe that despite all the challenges which are horrible, we just have to get on, as the Nike ad said, just do it. Just do it. We can't wait for better times. We have to be part of making better times. So you've had an even, obviously an even personality that has helped you. I think it's important to take it on. I think a lot of people wonder about that, you know, whether they're equipped to take on the sorts of challenges that you describe. I think you have to be very resilient to take on these challenges and where does resilience come from? Is it in ace? Is it from your family background? Is it from the experiences you've built? I mean, there's no doubt that having a long background in politics you have to be very resilient. One of our former Deputy Prime Ministers, the right Honourable Bob Tizzard, said to me once, you've got to remember that in an election, in your constituency, and certainly at the national level, rather less than half the population will ever vote for you. So you're going to have to accept that and get on with making your luck and finding ways of relating to people and putting up with all the arrows that come your way. Well, in fact, you do say you talk about the thick skin that is required. You can't take any of it personally, you said. You need to have tunnel vision, interesting choice of words, on why you're doing this and why you stick with it. Because if you opened your ear to a lot of the mindless things that are said, you'd end up personally crushed and I read it and I thought, so why do you do it? What do you emerge? How do you emerge if you really apply that? If you have a deaf ear, you don't hear it. So why should I take any notice of idiots driving around parts of New Zealand in the 2008 election with bumper stickers which said, and I quote, ditch the bitch? Why should I give it any credence at all? But that is life, unfortunately. There's always mean spirit of people and knockers. But you have to get on and do what you can, where you can, as you can. So in terms of intervening and refreshing things that you discover, because it seems to me that what you do very well, you work with people, you can build alliances very well and you work with existing systems but you refresh them. Am I right? But you can tell me if I'm wrong. Building whole new structures and architecture isn't something that you necessarily set yourself out to do, but you certainly believe in coming in and giving zhujing up, if I can use a colloquial word, what's already there. I find that quite interesting. Well, at the time of the lead up to the Russian Revolution, there were Mensheviks and there were Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks want to throw out everything and the Mensheviks said, let's see what we can change round here. So I'm obviously in that category. And I do believe that if you have a clear vision of where you want to go, a journey takes thousands of steps, but if you know where you want to go and you keep taking steps consistent with that, over time it will add up to very, very significant change. Sometimes you do need to design whole new institutions, obviously, but often you can make substantial change within the existing framework. I have to ask you now about the bids that are very much part of your the documentary and this piece from The Guardian, Helen Clark I hit my first glass ceiling at the UN. In the UN's 72-year history eight of its nine secretaries general have been decided behind closed doors by a few powerful countries but not the ninth. Last year's appointment process resembled American Idol, a public facing contest with a strong social media component and a side of drama and double crossing and you were in the middle of it all and you certainly didn't emerge the winner which we all thought for quite a long time you would be. You see the difference with American Idol one of the many differences was that the people didn't get to vote. But the truth is it was still decided in a closed room and it went to the 193 member states but that's a rubber stamp. It was decided within a small room and within that small room within the even smaller group so it's the permanent five members who in effect decided because if any of them has an abjuring action to a particular candidate then that's history. What I have said in interviews in Australia in the last week or so because I haven't really spoken about the contest prior to now is that I think that the reform that's needed is to throw it open to the membership. Let the membership choose. This is what the World Health Assembly did in choosing the new director general. Just in the last few weeks they went through a process of balloting I think amongst them perhaps the executive body which was a subset of the member states but in the end there were three candidates who went to the member states for a vote. So the World Health Organization is like the UN the universal membership body. If it's good enough for it, why isn't it good enough for the UN? You see the reports say that three members of the Security Council voted against you. Why? What's all that about? Well you don't know what the outcome would have been if it would have been possible to have more votes among the non-permanent members but I think by the time it got to that point of the formal vote then it was clear who was going to be elected so presumably those among the permanent five who cast their no votes had no reason to be particularly polite so they just cast it. They knew who they wanted. Now you could see that happening could you? Oh yes. And I could actually see it happening from the beginning of August but again you may see this quoted in the article there was quite a discussion that I had with the New Zealand Government and Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade might say were totally committed to this campaign. I could not have asked for more from Prime Minister John Key Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murray McCully the New Zealand Foreign Affairs and Trade, or the Kiwi Public. So everyone was committed but we could see that despite being promised double figure votes in every ballot we never got double figures and so by the beginning of August there had been two of these votes and one I got eight votes and the other six. So there was a discussion was it worth carrying on and I went home for a couple of weeks and reflected on it and then I thought well I don't want people saying that you pull out when the going gets tough because that's not actually my nature I've always kept going when the going gets tough and I felt it was very important for women to stick into the end to make the point. I mean there's no question that I was qualified for the job. Actually there's no question that among the other women there were a number who were well qualified for the job and it ended up that almost all the women stayed into the bitter end to make the point that the women weren't going to walk away from this fight and believe they had something to offer. Yes there's a devastating quote clearly the Secretary the Security Council was looking for someone like me very with a small independent minded country wasn't not a small independently minded country having been independently minded with an independently minded leader reading my shorthand who wasn't I can't even read my shorthand who apparently evidently wasn't the one whom they wanted to choose they didn't want this outcome so were you two independently minded when you do think about it did you look as though you wouldn't couldn't be harnessed? Well I think there was an element of that and I think also I'm known as a reformer I had brought my whole record in Kiwi politics my government was a very progressive reforming government I went to UNDP and over time made a huge amount of change there so I was a reformer now also at the start of my campaign we had some discussion about probably a lot of people don't really want much reform but the truth is you can't present as something you're not that wouldn't be authentic and I think in public life authenticity is everything so you can't run away from the fact that you're a reformer and heaven knows there's quite a few things that need to change around the UN so that has to be stated did it hurt? Did it hurt? I mean you feel a bit grumpy that you spent six months of your life on something that didn't work out but I've always had a capacity to slam the door on something that didn't work out and get on to the next thing so I say I'm enjoying my fourth reinvention Did our own Kevin Rudd I might add have any role in this or the fact that he was in the brew in some form did it play a role? Well to sort of paraphrase Spike Milligan he didn't have a role in my downfall but so what did basic question what did you learn from it what did you take away from it because as you say it's the first time you'd really hit this glass ceiling well that's true I think in New Zealand we're used to women crashing through glass ceilings I'm not saying it was easy I think I've got so many shafts of glass in my head there's not much room for any more of those either but you know in the end you can get there on your merits but I think it's really a question of what the UN is looking for and you're putting yourself in front of a constituency most of which has never known many women in significant leadership positions so may have trouble visualising what that could be It was interesting too before I move into the other aspects you've got this extraordinary social media presence I think you've got 158,000 followers or something or other and it didn't help you this great debate as to how much social media or the non-orthodox media does influence the cause of events you've clearly achieved a lot through that but in this when it got to that rubber hitting the road my instinct is it didn't No and that's why I think it's quite wrong really to say that the election was a transparent process it wasn't a transparent process the only thing that was different I think was that there was an open call for nominations people came forward it wasn't innovation to be able to present at the General Assembly and it was an innovation to have Al Jazeera host a debate among candidates in the General Assembly Hall that is where the transparency ended there was not a vote among the General Assembly members and it went behind closed doors into the Security Council now to give you an insight into how opaque that became the Security Council decided that at the end of each of its secret informal ballots of which there were a number it would not advise the President of the General Assembly the outcome and this is shown in the film that's been made my year with Helen where after each of these ballots the President of the Security Council for the month would come out address the waiting media and the numbers actually got smaller as it went by because the media knew they weren't going to say anything and all of the President of the Security Council was authorised to say was today we held a ballot and I have informed the President of the General Assembly that we have held it great I can tell you within minutes the first media had the snapshot photo of the final counting paper so what was the point of the charade I mean everybody knew so I think it was it was insulting to the President of the General Assembly and really insulting to the membership of the UN will it change? I doubt it but I think there needs to be some reflection on this this is why I say the best change would be to look very carefully at what the World Health Organisation just did which was to throw it open to the membership and you know you said in your speech that a lot of the members are not keen on the sorts of changes generally and collaboration in particular the collaboration why is that so? Well this issue of trying to get greater collaboration across humanitarian humanitarian development fine the main obstacles to that can be the agencies themselves but the member states think they should work more closely together it's when you start to bring in the spectrum across human rights and political and peacekeeping that some countries start to get very nervous about interference and sovereign affairs so yeah that gets very very tricky did your knowledge of politics help from domestically can you apply it to the world stage like this is there a lot of overlap or not? Yes when I put my hand up for this position when it was first drawn to my attention I said to the person who drew it to my attention who was a senior New Zealand diplomat I said but I haven't actually worked myself in international development and he said Helen don't be ridiculous everything you have done in your career is relevant to international development and he proved to be absolutely correct because going to UNDP what were you trying to do you were working with your organisation to support countries to improve their institutions build their capacities that has asked to risk reduction capacity their their social protection systems how to make their growth more inclusive how to deal with environmental regulation and protection all of these issues I've worked on for decades so it was all highly relevant as was having had a lifelong interest in international affairs and having very very broad networks from my time especially as a head of government but also going back to being involved in international youth political movements in the 1970s so can you see a woman for I leave this as secretary general in the near future well I hope next time and I think it would be good to be able to identify who that person might be and to rally around them this time there were a number of candidates and I think not just myself but there were others clearly capable of doing doing the job maybe doing it in different ways than I would have done it but perfectly confident and capable of doing a good job so could there be one person who could be lifted above all others to be given a really good go at it because I just don't think it's that credible for the UN not to walk the talk one of the things which really got social media going not long after the outcome of the contest was an announcement that the cartoon character Wonder Woman was going to become an emblem for the UN on equality and empowerment of women and social media went berserk about it and said you just had an opportunity to have a real Wonder Woman and you picked a cartoon character actually the cartoon character didn't survive this eventually it was withdrawn there was such a public reaction so if you'd got there this is my little transition little segue if you had got there what would you have prioritised by way of change because you've said that the the UN is not as effective as it could be and particularly I presume that was even in more stable times than it is now so what would you prioritise well I think there's about three key key areas let's not spend a lot of time on the the inefficient and costly workings of the UN secretariat you know when you compare what you can do with an UNDP or the other autonomous programmes like UNDP or the specialised agencies you have a lot of discretion to revamp and overhaul and modernise your organisation and drag it into the 21st century the secretariat has not had that experience people may not know that there's just been an appointment new appointment for Under Secretary General of Management which is a long time New Zealander on the UN service Jan Beagle and I really wish her all the best with the huge reform job that needs to be done there but you need the support of the Secretary General to drive that change it can't really be affected by the Under Secretary General for Management alone secondly I think the peace and security architecture was essentially designed for earlier times and we could say that for better or worse the UN did more or less keep the peace between the great powers there wasn't a significant conflict between them hasn't been a plant-printing of conflicts between proxies but this latest spate of protracted crises extremist elements causing havoc in a wide range of countries this needs a much deeper reflection and the tools the Security Council has don't really deal with that at all and so if you then come back to linking in across the system as I said in my speech it's clear to me that you can't prevent conflict and sustain peace through what you do with those tools anyway the international community has to realise that building the societies which aren't going to generate conflict and misery requires a lot of long-term development investment and advocacy of different ways of doing things at the very time when a lot of countries are going backwards on their development assistance investments and being dragged to the kind of relief end of it because people's lives are on the line but if we're having to fund a much greater humanitarian burden out of a relatively static development assistance budget then we're going backwards on development so then what the Secretary General needs to do and what we will do is be very clear that he slash she wants the system to work in a united way doesn't want the Humanitarians and Development Acters fighting, doesn't want the political and peacekeeping missions fighting with the country teams we're all in this together and the weight of the Secretary General has to be put behind at least getting the system to work together if the member states won't the potential is there you're saying with some different lever pulling it's not a whole new organisation that somehow acts as more as a circuit breaker by the sound of you pre-empt some of it you're not going to be able to rewrite the charter so the charter will stay I guess with this sort of stuck peace and security architecture but within the UN organisations you could do quite a lot to improve the way in which we work and get more impact for peace and development than we get at the present time but I am amused as I imagine everyone is to how to get the Security Council to work better on the conflicts on which it has no impact whatsoever actually you made an interesting remark about business how business does business will affect the global agenda can you expand a bit on that please business can lead the businesses I've seen leading in areas like zero deforestation in supply chains for palm oil absolutely incredible companies really taking a risk to step out there and say we're not going to buy any product from land that's just been deforested now that sends a powerful signal to governments not to bother deforestation but you do need everyone in together otherwise the cheap oil will go to those who and did UNDP we were part of the brokers of that we brought together this New York declaration on forests so look I think for business also to play its full role governments have to put the strategic and policy and regulatory frameworks in place which will steer investment towards sustainability the kind of energy infrastructure kind of transport infrastructure industry business will respond to very clear signals and from my time in government I remember the overwhelming call of business being give us a certain framework they might not always like the framework but they wanted certainty they wanted to know where they could invest it's a very live debate at the moment in Australia so that's something that you would urge could be done more in terms of drawing in a whole new group of people obviously maybe the UN could be far better helped by business actors than it is at the moment well there's always some constraints on that and UNDP as with the other agencies we all have our strategies on where we can engage and where we can't if you take WHO for example it can't take money from pharmaceutical companies can't take money from tobacco alcohol food whatever but actually at UNDP and others we put a lot of constraints on ourselves like that as well but having said that there are a great many highly ethical companies that you can deal with and most UN agencies including the one that I led do have relationships with those companies you talked about protracted conflict too clearly it's sort of completely torments you was hard before the new normal but it's even worse now in your experience how do countries get past this because I think a lot about this how do people learn to effectively forgive each other in effect move past I remember a friend of mine was working in Cambodia and he arrived at an office and he noticed that he couldn't get collaboration from two he was in Australia he was in New Zealand actually and he finally said what's the matter with those two that man's father killed that man's father and it's just sort of yesterday how do you help people get beyond these sorts of terrible memories well it's very very difficult and different countries take different approaches to it so if you take Rwanda which experienced genocide while the UN Peacekeepers watched the UN watched disgraceful chapter in the history so Paul Kagame came to power a million people in that tiny country were estimated to be killed what do you do do you start a process of trying to prosecute every perpetrator of the genocide because clearly to kill a million people there were a great many of them they decided they couldn't do that because they would have spent completely immersed with trials I mean it's almost impossible to think that it could have been feasible now they did consult and get ideas from the international system including UNDP on what do we do because we have to somehow try and bring peace to our tortured and tormented society and they designed this process which was called the Gachacha Courts which was basically a community level facilitation where people came forward and told their stories and with transitional justice the storytelling being able to be heard to have the torment that you have been through acknowledged as incredibly important now over the years I've seen media comment which can be a little bit derisory about this and you do put yourself in the position of the woman who comes forward to testify and you see the stories where literally and this would be a very common story a woman would have been raped and tortured herself she would have seen her husband killed and possibly her children killed or the remaining children will have witnessed the crime how do any of us cope with that and then having had her say at the community hearing the perpetrator is asked to get up and he acknowledges what he did so he's heard all this he's heard all that and he acknowledges it and he's not in jail he's living down the path and everybody having been heard the file is closed it's tough isn't it it's very tough well that's really what the South Africans did too isn't it with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission telling the truth is very important and there's a great debate about that well you know I think of the long running Truth and Reconciliation Process New Zealand has had with the Treaty of Waitangi Tribunal and the hearings I mean you can never fully recompense for what was lost but the truth telling documenting the story the apology from the Crown and recompense is taken as a full and final settlement of course it's never enough but this is a model you feel that you've got some confidence in in terms of because it's crucially important isn't it in terms of where we head next yes it is because you have to try to settle settle grievance but as I say every society will undertake it in its own way you know the number of the Latin American countries went through horrible periods of dictatorship and from time to time you will still read of trials coming out with verdicts decades after the crimes occurred but there's others where not much of that has happened and one leader said to me when I asked why he hadn't gone down that route and this was a person who had himself been seriously tortured he said I just don't have the stomach for it perhaps the next generation will pick it up so as I say every society will find a way of dealing with it and then do they work together having told the truth can they actually then collaborate or do they just not make war well yeah just not make war and I'm actually going to I think we might have time for a couple of questions look the other sort of just the amazing shifting sands of today's debates and the fact that nothing seems particularly stable this has really been your hallmark it seems to me I look back through your career that you've bought perceived stability people have felt right things are stable so I don't know how you view what's currently happening and this whole debate about globalists versus localists that you've been you even said in reply to somebody once when you were living in New York and you said look I'm not a localist I'm not of New York you actually use the phrase globalist I don't think you meant it in that sense well I don't know tell us what you meant because the argument is that people they're different temperaments different temperamental styles and it's wrecking our politics at the moment this bifurcation between the two yes I mean there is a lot of a lot of polarization in a lot of countries and one of the reliefs of no longer living in New York is not turning on the TV to that every day I mean the level of polarization is so extreme and I much prefer more the discourse that you would get in continental Europe which for the most part while there's difference there's a sort of parameters around it where it doesn't get quite so extreme but no they are troubling times and times where the appeal to nationalism and putting your own country first obviously gets a lot of currency but I think we also need to understand perhaps a little more about what drives that and I do think that outcomes like that of the US election and of Brexit and of the relatively strong support which propelled Ms Le Pen into the final of the French election are very much about the people who have missed out on the process of globalization the people on the rust belts and the areas that have never been the same and I do recall about 13 years ago going to speak at the international labour organization assembly on a report which the then director general one Somavia had commissioned on the social impacts of globalization and it made the point that the way globalization had proceeded had created a world which was free for the movement of business and capital but left a lot of people behind now if you leave people behind eventually there will be a political cost to that and it's not necessary to leave people behind if you look say at the Scandinavian societies which often taken as a bit of a model for public policy they keep investing in their people you have to help people adjust to changing economic times you can't freeze economies where they were that will be a route to poverty but people have to be equipped to be part of the new economy with continual re-education and training and skills and maybe relocation grants whatever I must quote you there's something just I read was posted yesterday by Graham Freudenberg who was you know Whitlam's great speech writer for octogenarians like me he wrote the most astonishing development since the collapse of the Soviet Union is that so much of the west's hopes for international sanity, civility and peace should now rest with of all countries Germany he for the name Freudenberg as German extraction do you think this is right well Germany and the stability of leadership that Germany has had has just been so important I think I'm not saying I agree with every call and I think you know the perhaps the Eurozone which largely you know moves around the German cycle has been pretty tough on some economies but that sort of total commitment of Germany to Europe to regionalism and to multilateralism has been incredibly important now I think we've just got time for just two I think we've got mics haven't we are the side very they'll have to be quick I'm afraid so if you can hop up to the mics I'll give you there we are thank you both everyone very much thank you Helen for a wonderful presentation my name is Susan Hutchinson I'm a PhD student here at the ANU and I'm also on the steering committee for the Australian Civil Society Coalition on Women, Peace and Security I was very interested in the discussion that you had around conflict and instability framework we had been waiting for a peace and security goal from the new agenda and I was left lacking with goal 16 particularly from a gender perspective and I wondered if you might explain you've spoken a little bit about the barriers between for example the development arms the human rights and the peace and security arms of the UN and we know that the global studies said that the women peace and security agenda needs to get back to some of those roots but the targets and the measures within goal 16 are entirely ungendered and largely have little consideration for the difference between violence in conflict and violence without so I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit on some of those themes that you've spoken about in the context of peace and security of the peace and justice goal and I'm going to take a second one and we'll do the two together yes please it was interesting that you alluded to the horrific looming problems around famine in Africa at the moment it seems to me that there's a nexus there between issues of redistributive economic justice and ecologically sustainable development Australia I think has an enormous role to play in ameliorating these global ecological problems because the permaculture Institute has the conceptual capacity to basically redesign the sustainable agricultural systems that are needed in a zero deforestation economy I wonder if you've got any thoughts about how the UN could integrate and incorporate permacultural design principles into solving these global famine problems thank you well Prips dealing with the second one first the famines are threatened and actually to some extent already happening in countries which really aren't necessarily experiencing drought like Yemen which is naturally dry and the northeast of Nigeria is feeling naturally dry and a lot of South Sudan isn't naturally dry I mean the main reason for the famine is the conflict so people are displaced they can't go to their fields they haven't got money food conflict is raging so those who could bring relief can't get access that's the story of famine Somalia still has insurgency going and significant part of the country and the centre and the south although as I said this drought is also threatening famine in areas of the country which have been relatively stable like Somaliland and Puntland so to to combat famine you need peace which as I say is elusive but to come also to the other aspect of your question I guess of course it is also very dry in countries adjacent to Somalia like Kenya and like Ethiopia now there won't be famine in those countries because there isn't conflict and the communities have access and while for Kenya the international community hasn't stepped up a lot it has a bit the government is on to it and one way or another they'll get through there will be some very hungry children very malnourished children severely acutely malnourished children but people won't die with a bit more support children wouldn't be as malnourished either in Ethiopia because it's a least developed country but in the response I think it's really important to be thinking about how to build the resilience to future such events and here I think Australia has an incredible role it can play because you have so much dry land here you know how to farm dry land you have enormous skills enormous research capacity and I think for AusAid and then for the relationships that Australia has with other governments and agencies on the ground Australia could do a power of good in building resilient agricultural systems in dry lands on women peace and security and goal 16 everything you say is right goal 16 isn't gendered bear in mind that goal 16 was the most controversial goal of all the SDGs G77 and China for the most part did not like goal 16 because they saw it as a wedge for busy bodies who would lecture countries about their governance and lack of democracy and human rights issues and other such things and goal 16 I think really only survived it in with the WIOG constituency Western European and others orphans like Australia and New Zealand being prepared to give way on having 17 goals in total because if the majority of the UN could have sacrificed any goal it would have been goal 16 so it was hard to have it at all and to get that link to good governance and the rule of law and inclusiveness and representativeness don't let the best be the enemy of the good so you're right what the concern you express around the women peace and security agenda adequately captured in it final what is the 4-3 invention you alluded to it well I seem to be busier than ever actually because when you've been around as long as I have doing interesting things there's a lot of people who think you have something interesting to say so I'm out there offering opinions sharing experiences doing a lot of speeches having fun essentially no comment ladies and gentlemen please thank Helen Clark