PAUL MURRAY: Anthony Albanese’s pitch to broken UN a vanity project that flies in the face of common sense

How many tinpot nations is Anthony Albanese prepared to bribe to realise his ambition of a piddling temporary place on the United Nations Security Council?

Judging from the line-up of 77 that walked out of the General Assembly last week in a stunt aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there will be no shortage of candidates for a handout from the pro-Palestine Albanese Government.

Labor has form in this sort of wheeler-dealing at the UN which comes at huge cost and no real benefit for cash-strapped Australians already concerned about how the government spends their taxes.

Back in 2008, that other well-known Australian global citizen, Kevin Rudd, unilaterally decided to pursue an upcoming vacancy on the council for two years from 2013.

Our foreign aid to Africa strangely soared fourfold from US$78m to US$400m in 2012 when the vote was taken.

That cash splash secured support from all 54 African nations, which shows just how corrupt the UN really is when such bloc-voting occurs. But Rudd’s megalomania extended beyond inducing Africans.

The man who later tried to become the UN’s Secretary-General had the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade campaigning heavily in Latin America for its 33 votes. DFAT also chased 14 votes in the Caribbean, never before part of our overseas aid programs, by funding climate‑resilience programs.

While Netanyahu last week spoke to a partially-empty Assembly – after the observer-status Palestinian delegation asked supportive nations to send as many staff as possible into the chamber to make the walkout look more dramatic – Albanese’s speech got an even smaller audience, through sheer indifference.

But his pitch to the UN’s smaller states must have had them licking their lips in anticipation of another round of Australian vote-buying.

“Mr President, Australia’s purpose in its relations with the United Nations is clear and our approach is principled,” Albanese said. “We engage across regions, listen to different perspectives, and build trust. We champion the rights, sovereignty and agency of all, particularly smaller and mid-sized nations.

“We are a reliable, practical, and transparent partner.”

Oh, really? It took years for the story of the Rudd Government’s vote-buying to emerge because it was never officially disclosed while underway. The $500m-plus spend has never been publicly explained, detailed nor audited.

Who really copped the cash? And what did we get from our two-year post? Zilch.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of global non-government agency UN Watch, has warned that the diplomatic horse-trading required to win a Security Council seat makes any campaign ethically problematic for a democracy like Australia.

UN Watch says Australia risks distorting its foreign policy and making ugly trade-offs with “unsavoury regimes” to secure their vote if it faces any contest for the two non-permanent seats from 2029.

But Albanese made it clear last week that the game was on when he promised Australia would “amplify the voices of small states and middle powers to ensure a wider range of perspectives shape the Council’s decisions.”

Here comes the gravy train. Ka-chink.

Albanese had the gall to reference the Holocaust, despite the accusations of mainstream Australian Jewish organisations he was mute and unresponsive while anti-semitism grew in the lead-up to the Bondi massacre.

“The pioneers who built this institution from the ruins of war – proud Australians among them – were also coming to terms with two terrible truths,” Albanese intoned. “The horrors of the Holocaust. And the unprecedented horror of nuclear weapons.”

That from a foundation member of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine who last year engineered Australia’s betrayal of Israel, a nation whose membership of the UN was helped by real statesmen from his party, with a secure home for Holocaust survivors adding contemporary moral persuasion to their cause.

Netanyahu’s speech characteristically confronted his enemies head-on as the dregs of the UN filed out. “If there are any other moral cowards who haven’t yet left this hall – please do so now,” he thundered.

The UN was formed to air conflicting views and resolve them. The walkout poses a question all Australians should consider as Albanese embarks on another Voice-like indulgence: What’s the point of the UN? Does it have one anymore?

Netanyahu outlined the existential threat Iran and its well-paid henchmen in Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israel, which he first explained to the Assembly 14 years before.

“Devastating Iran’s nuclear facilities was hard,” Netanyahu said. “But for me, it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make as prime minister. Because if we hadn’t done it, we’d all be dead.

“Now, you want to hear the ultimate irony? In defending itself, Israel is also defending many of the countries whose delegates just left this hall!

“In fact, I want you to know that many of their leaders even thank us privately for taking out Iran’s nukes. It’s hard to imagine more mind-blowing hypocrisy, but that’s exactly what it is.

“This isn’t the first time we were faced with the threat of annihilation. On June 5, 1967, Israel was surrounded by enemies who openly swore to destroy us. We weren’t then in Judea Samaria, the heart of the historic homeland of the Jewish people. We weren’t in Gaza. We weren’t on the Golan Heights.

“At that time, on the eve of the Six-Day War in 1967, we weren’t in any of these places. We were on a tiny sliver of land – we still are – that is equal to about one third of one percent of the landmass of the entire Arab world.

“Yet they accuse Israel of colonialism. Some colonialism. And who’s accusing us? Among them are people in Britain and in France. For God’s sake, they invented the term.

“Yet at the time, on this tiny patch of Earth, no West Bank, no Gaza, no Golan Heights, just the very survival of this one and only Jewish state, because this is what this conflict is about. It’s not about territories; it’s about a Jewish state at any boundaries.”

On the eve of the third anniversary this Wednesday of the Hamas massacre of 1200 people that led to the war in Gaza, Netanyahu saved his most damning criticism for a lie spread by the United Nations itself.

Calling it “the darkest day in Israel’s history” he described how “thousands of Palestinian terrorists stormed into Israel from Gaza.”

“I want you to know there wasn’t a single Israeli in Gaza at the time,” Netanyahu said. “Not a civilian, not a soldier. Not one! It didn’t matter one bit.

“The Hamas terrorists committed the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.”

And he said accusing Israel of genocide for retaliating “is the greatest lie of the century.”

However, it is one perpetrated by a series of UN reports which are conveniently used as propaganda by people with a grievance against Israel – or Jews anywhere.

This is despite the simplest test of logic that might be applied: If Israel intended genocide against Palestinians, it would target them wherever it could.

Some facts. About 2m Palestinians live within the 1948 boundaries of Israel, another 3m on the “occupied” West Bank and about 400,000 in East Jerusalem. There is no evidence of genocidal killings of any of those Palestinians.

Most people would not realise that those UN reports make their so-called findings based on a legal standard which is below our civil test of “the balance of probabilities” and worlds away from a criminal standard of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

“The Commission applies the same methodology and standard of proof previously adopted for its investigations, that is, ‘reasonable grounds to conclude’, in assessing the factual findings and conclusions,” the UN Human Rights Council’s October 2025 report said.

This is the lowest evidentiary threshold used in UN fact‑finding exercises. But it is the basis for all UN findings on Gaza. There has never been a judicial finding of genocide against Israel, which would require proving intent.

The UN reports do not adequately distinguish between killing combatants and civilians and studiously ignore Israel’s conduct toward Palestinians outside Gaza. They simplistically conflate possible war crimes with genocide.

Israel’s behaviour toward Palestinians outside Gaza completely contradicts genocidal intent. Its tactics in Gaza fit countering an insurgency, however forcefully, not extermination.

The loss of life in Gaza has been truly horrifying with its citizens trapped between two desperate forces – the IDF fighting for Israel’s existence and Hamas terrorists prepared to do anything to destroy the Jewish state, including using Palestinians as human shields.

To substantiate an assertion of the most hideous crime against humanity, the UN uses the lowest possible legal standard. Why?

It can only be to allow it to make findings for propaganda purposes it could not do under a proper criminal standard. In other words, to allow it to play cynical politics against Israel.

Which is why the UN cannot be taken seriously. And why Australia should not be part of what is just another manifestation of Jew hatred.