Burnishing New Zealand's small state rampant credentials: Ken Ross discusses the UN legacies of Helen Clark and several other New Zealanders.

• Author: Ross, Ken

Helen Clark, most of all, warrants her personal high UN credentials from her capable willingness to be the UN secretary-general. Peter Fraser has been our most outstanding prime minister for seeking the best possible United Nations. Bruce Turner, Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant's 'finance minister', is the New Zealander who, as a UN employee, has done most towards making the organisation capable and effective. Clark's 'double second' to Fraser and Turner adds much to her lustre for furthering New Zealand's 'small state rampant' credentials at the United Nations.

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'I hit my first glass ceiling at the UN' (Helen Clark, 2017) (1)

Helen Clark's double second--to Peter Fraser and Bruce Turner --has her up there amongst those who have best furthered New Zealand's 'small state rampant' credentials that Fred Wood tagged Fraser's United Nations efforts. (2) Most of all, Clark warrants her personal high standing from her capable willingness to be the UN secretary-general.

Fraser is our most outstanding prime minister for seeking the best possible United Nations. Turner is the New Zealander who, as a UN employee, has done most towards making the organisation capable and effective. When Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant's 'finance minister' from 1955 to 1972, Turner managed the organisation's finances with such wizardry that it weathered big powers' Cold War endeavours to bankrupt the United Nations out of existence.

David Lange is the other prime minister to have most exhibited our 'small state rampant' credentials at the United Nations: first, when exporting our 'not-for-export' nuclear-free advocacy and, second, leading the South Pacific initiative for enabling, against Paris' virulent opposition, that the French territory of New Caledonia could become independent by reinscription as a UN non-self-governing territory.

A third category, that of New Zealand officials contributing most to our UN credibility, is beyond the scope of this article. Finalists in that category are Carl Berendsen, Alister McIntosh, Frank Corner and Leslie Munro, the one New Zealander to have been president of the UN General Assembly (1957-58).

When the organisation was being formed at San Francisco in 1945, Fraser forthrightly asserted New Zealand's opposition to the big powers having an enduring veto entidement. His chairmanship of the committee that created the Trusteeship Council, which led to the decolonisation process that saw the world transformed as new states emerged, was his second major contribution. Carl Berendsen, Alister McIntosh and J.V. Wilson were Fraser's top trio of advisors in San Francisco. Seventeen years later Wilson gave us the seminal account of Fraser's labouring for a better United Nations. (3) He also recounts Fraser's participation at the first UN General Assembly held in London in 1946. Highlights then for Fraser were: New Zealand going on the board of UNESCO, helping Australia secure a two-year term (1946-47) as one of the first bunch of six non-permanent members of the UN Security Council and getting Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium's foreign minister) elected the first president of the General Assembly.

Fraser was not at the General Assembly in 1947. He made his presence evident at the third session, in Paris in late 1948. He got Herbert Evatt, his Australian 'mate', the presidency of that year's assembly: Alister McIntosh had earlier advised his Canberra counterpart, John Burton, that Wellington would back Evatt, though he informed Burton that Fraser had 'had a number of feelers extended to him from diverse sources suggesting that if he [Fraser] stood for the Presidency he would get a larger measure of support'. (4)

Invaluable role

By February 1956, when UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold met Prime Minister Sidney Holland and his Cabinet colleagues in Wellington, he informed them of how invaluable Turner was to him, describing him as 'the Minister of Finance for the United Nations'. (5) For the decade prior to his joining the United Nations staff in April 1946 Turner had worked closely with Walter Nash, most importantly going with Nash to Washington when...