Australia should not attempt to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The reason is not the money that that lobbying to get it will cost. The reasons are strategic.
The permanent seats on the UN security council belong to Britain, the USA, France, Russia and China. They were handed out at the end of WWII. Germany does not have one because it started the war and lost it. Niether does Japan. The 5 seats are distributed throughout the globe but there are no seats for countries in South America and Africa because for the most part they were not involved in WWII, North Africa accepted. No disrespect to those guys, or to Germany or Japan for that matter. I think I this stuff is pretty well-understood historical fact (although it's off the top of my head).
There are also non-permanent rotating seats at the council. These seats do NOT have the power of veto that the permanent seats have. France and Russia's power of veto over UN security council resolution were used to block UN support for the war in Iraq, not that there was much support to block. Australia gets its turn as one of the rotating seats on the council now and then, but it is not privy to every decision and it can't block anything.
We cannot claim a special right to sit there because of our leadership in the Asia Pacific region or because we were on winning side in both world wars.
If we get a seat on the UN security council it will set a precident that the UN wont be able to stop. Every other country with 20 million people or more and an Army that can't defend it's territory will get one too. India, Canada, Germany, Israel (although they can defend themselves), South Africa, Brazil, Nigeria, Argentina, Mexico the list is never ending. If all these countries got seats it would paralize the UN with bureacratic impotence. If any of them did not like anything about a resolution they could veto it. Some might say it is not possible to get more paralised than the UN is at the moment, but to the extent that pursuing power at the UN is a worth-while goal, the power and efficacy of the UN must be maintained.
Australia is not an independent military power. We should have as large a military as we can muster, but it will never be enough to defend our huge continent on it's own, not this century at least. We must pursue our strategic goals through strong alliances with other democracies in the region and the world: the US, Japan, India and Britain foremost among them (and maybe Indonesia). If we have the ear of these larger nations we will maintain influence over world affairs that far exceeds that which we could achieve on the UN security council.
BTW Has anyone heard the latest Megadeth album United Abominations. No prizes for guessing who's pissing Dave Mustaine off lately.
