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AUSTRALIA
AUSTRALIA
28 July 2015
United Nations Headquarters, New York
Global partnership and means of implementation
Statement by Kushla Munro, Assistant Secretary, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade
Thank you.
We see considerable opportunity to streamline and strengthen the means of implementation and global partnership sections of the document.
Our approach to these sections is guided by a desire to safeguard the delicate political balance achieved in Addis, and to have a clear and coherent document that withstands the test of time.
As suggested on Monday (and following the lead of Japan), we support a shorter reference to MOI in the declaration centred around paragraphs 38, 39 and 40 with the amendments we requested yesterday (and will not restate today). This would remove duplication and potential confusion.
On the specific Global Partnership and MOI chapter, we think this can be a succinct chapter, with the operative part of this chapter done in no more than three paragraphs.
The first paragraph in this chapter should be paragraph 59 which reaffirms our commitment to the full implementation of this agenda. It could also incorporate paragraph 67 which states that the MOI are universal, indivisible and interlinked.
The second paragraph of this chapter needs to clearly acknowledge that Addis is part and parcel of how we will collectively deliver the post-2015 agenda. Therefore, we should welcome and fully endorse the Addis agreement. The second sentence in this paragraph should accurately and respectfully describe the relationship between Addis and the SDGs.
To this end we have a ready-made solution if we take the language from paragraph 19 from Addis that states the post-2015 agenda can be met through the global partnership supported by the concrete policies and actions in the Action Agenda.
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We are confident that this is a fair solution to our apparent impasse on how Addis should be referenced in this document and its relationship to the SDGs. Like others, we have compared the MOI targets and the Addis package, looking at the consistencies and differences. We have found that the Addis text is either in alignment with or indeed more ambitious than the MOI targets.
The third paragraph of this chapter should be about the global partnership and this could simply be done by combining paragraph 62 and paragraph 65.
We think this chapter can be further streamlined by deleting paragraph 60 as it duplicates paragraph 67. The remainder of the paragraphs in the current draft selectively elevate parts of Addis over others. Accordingly these paragraphs can be deleted to bring balance back into our document.
To remove any doubt that we fully support Goal 17 and the MOI targets, we support the proposal from Canada, UK and the EU to bring these targets into a comprehensive Chapter 3.
The path forward doesn’t need to be overly complicated and divisive as we move forward to conclude this document by 31 July.
