“ And it will take more than four years to undo the damage Howard did our reputation in the UN.”

What nonsense! The Howard Government treated the UN the way it deserves to be treated.

The US and Israel as “UN pariahs”? Being a ‘pariah’ in the eyes of the incompetent UN and Tony Kevin is something for both these countries, and Australia, to be proud of. The UN is a failed organisation, loaded with despots from backward, undemocratic countries.

“Australia offended the majority UN membership by the way we treated refugees in detention, by pushing refugee boats away…”, bleats the ALP admirer, Tony Kevin.

More rubbish. Australia played by the rules, taking in UN-processed refugees. UN requirements for refugee status were always more stringent than Australia’s, as the acceptance of most illegals by Australia showed.

Tony Kevin is a sad man, with nothing better to do these days than remind everyone how much he hated – and obviously still hates – John Howard. His exhortation to the Rudd Government to do: “…a big repair job to do at the UN, and on relevant policies at home, if we want to get onto the UN Security Council” when the poor quality of countries poncing centre stage at the UN is considered, really shows how out of touch he is

What a load of sanctimonious garbage.

How about the UN clean up its amoral, corrupt and destructive behaviour. The main goal of the UN is to transfer money from poor people in rich countries and send it to rich people in poor countries.

The mindless lefties that think the answer to a perfect world is a powerful UN should consider how difficult it is to get an Australian parliament to cater for the interests of Australians. What possibility will there be for the UN to respond to any electorate?

How about one of OLOs intellects writing about the UN's and South Africa's abrogation of responsibility for the human rights violations perpetrated by the mass murdering racist Mugabe?

The only good UN is a dead one.

That's the thing about 'hate' Mr Right.. it 'consumes' the hater..and Tony Kevin seems so embittered and full of hatred, and racist anti Australian-ism... that he only sees a very limited and short sighted way in front. In fact..I suspect he only sees things on the left of his head.

How shallow and short sighted are Anti Australians.. they are unfaithful to their own nations future and distructive to it's past. They seek to erect abhorrent, sickening memorials to our enemies and the socialist 5th columnists who seek to undermine the fragile cultural cohesian of this great land.

They speak about 'high moral ground'...yet ask them to censor disgusting degrading women dehumanizing pornography and they will whine and yelp and yap about 'freedom'... then they will try to condemn people who expose hate filled, warlike, child abusing, wife beating, Christian hating, Jew loathing cults from gaining a bigger foothold in our land.

No..the reputation I want us to have is STRONG IN DEFENSE of our culture, and values. And if that means putting a few verbal bloody noses on UN loving, Australian hating, Socialist promoting, Porn pushing, bigots..I don't mind a bit.

In fact..put me at the front of the line of patriots who will issue the first verbal thumps.

I guess based on the comments to the article so far Prime Minister Rudd hasn't shown his hand to quickly. He's showing the UN that his government sees things differently from the Liberal Party, wants to be a part of the UN and in a leadership role, and thus the UN could expect that there will be some kind of "reversal" or "repair" in Australia's behaviour to achieve this. Prime Minister Rudd is leaving nothing to the imagination!

Of course there will be those opposed to Australia's involvement with the UN, either in this capacity or full stop.

Richard left out a word

Justifiably i.e.

those who are justifiably opposed

This article had a thought provoking title but that was about it. There is one fundamental question that needs to be answered and isn’t addressed in this article; and that is why?

Why does Australian have to repair its relationship with the UN?

The organisation is fundamentally broken, mired in its own bureaucracy and incapable of decisive action. What possible benefit flows to Australia by taking a place in the Security Council alongside Burkina Faso, Libya and Panama? Perhaps they are seen as better allies than the world’s only superpower. Alternatively, we could be hidden in among the 192 member General Assembly of the UN which doesn’t even cast votes, they prefer a ‘general consensus’ on weighty issues such as improving global road safety and a possible declaration of 2009 as the international year of astronomy.

With a government driven by symbolism, hand-wringing and empty gestures we can expect more of this pointless activity. On face value it does us little harm but equally it does us no good while changing peoples focus from meaningful bi-lateral relationships to wishy-washy relationships based solely on non-offensive words to organisations such as the UN.