Great job, you mindless virtue-signallers. This overreach could lead to disaster

For starters it's a talk fest. Hop on the podium and share your thoughts with the world, at least with those listening. Your team will offer the accolade we offer to kids and dogs when they follow instruction correctly. You know the one: "Great job".

Ignoring the International law requirements for recognition of a state, a gaggle of leaders gathered at the UN to announce their commitment to a Palestinian state. Now what? Good question. Now the virtue signalling is complete, we might ask: "What has changed?" Answer. Zip. Zero. Nothing.

It's great that the Arab league has called on Hamas to give up claims to govern Gaza, and coincidentally demilitarise. If what we read is true, it is also a flight of fantasy. The name of the organisation under which hate manifests itself and atrocities are committed matters little.

Indeed, the world over, it is understood that in business, in licensing and so many fields the people might stay the same, but the name of the business or the holding company changes. The name, not the people, changes.

In that vein, what is to stop Hamas members and supporters just emptying out the Hamas organisation and creating something else?

Perhaps another one, or a pyramid of related organisations. To monitor this kind of thing when you're dealing with idiots has its problems. When the people aren't stupid and in fact have some smarts about them it would be a nightmare.

There's a deeper issue. The name just doesn't matter. It's the hate and the commitment to atrocities that does the harm.

We know that kids have been indoctrinated against Jewish people. We know that otherwise people in Gaza celebrated the October 7 massacre and rallied in the streets to cheer the degradation of Israeli bodies. Irish presidential candidate Catherine Connolly says Hamas is part of the fabric of the Palestinian people, so she clearly doesn't see the commitment disappearing even if the name does. She says others have no right telling them who they can and cannot vote for. Do we really imagine Hamas committed Palestinians will overnight become the John Lennons and Yoko Onos of the Middle East? You might drive Hamas out, but the people and the hate will be there under another name.

Just imagine a Palestinian state comes to pass, and there are credible, if not perfect, elections. All goes well for an all too brief period, and then bang.

A bunch of members of parliament decide to leave the party under which they got elected. Unless there's a rule that they then lose their seat you might have a bunch of members masquerading as independents free from the constraints under which they were elected.

We see that all too often in our own parliaments. People get elected under one banner and then, with no apparent embarrassment, jump ship to paddle their canoe in a lagoon of their own choosing. And voters are stuck with it.

Or, perhaps worse, the elected members within the party under which they were elected just decide to go in a different direction. Whipping up hate and anger in the Middle East clearly isn't hard. Drumming up a reason for a volte face would be child's play.

Where will that leave all the leaders around the world who, tired of the conflict, reached out and clutched at straws? They'll all say they tried. Big deal. You don't get points for that. Nor for signalling what you think is virtue.

Then there's the Palestinian Authority. A model of corruption rather than competence. Apparently our government has some faith in its capacity to influence Hamas. Where that faith comes from is not apparent.

With all the diversion of aid away from people in Gaza and into the hands of Hamas how can the Palestinian Authority have any credibility?

Where to from here is a fair question. We've had the big theatrical announcement. How do we progress to something actually changing on the ground? Don't hold your breath.

Many people had high hopes for the UN when it was formed. The world co-operating is a genuinely admirable goal. We've ended up with a body that is an overbloated bureaucracy. The problem is it isn't answerable to anyone. When a person or a body is unchecked, expect dysfunction.

The UN undertakes two quite different tasks.

One where we agree to share the workload, the knowledge and effort in a wide variety of areas of common interest to humanity.

It might be scientific co-operation, in research exchange, or agricultural knowledge. Bodies like the World Food Program step up in the most difficult of circumstances to feed those impacted by wars or natural disasters. UN Peacekeepers, where we have a proud history, do an excellent job.

There may be some inefficiencies throughout the system, but let's face it they're everywhere. They should be cleaned up. Nonetheless, the goals of sharing what knowledge we can, sharing effort to keep peace, save people from starvation and not reinventing the wheel certainly pass the pub test.

Then there's the second task which the UN seems to relish.

That's where a bunch of people in the UN, unelected by citizens, get together, have a chat and collectively decide what everyone else ought to do. There might have been a sliver of sense to this in the early days, but it's developed into a joke. People unelected by citizens are simply unaccountable. It just doesn't work. Give a guy a job, or a girl, where they are in no way answerable to the people whose lives their decisions impact and you'll see the worst of that person.

The noted Australian jurist John Bray once asked Gough Whitlam if Australia signed up to a treaty on road safety that incidentally covered the possible frequency and timing of traffic lights would that mean the UN could dictate how many traffic lights there might be in a main street in Adelaide and for how long they might be red or green? Somewhat surprised by the apparent mundane nature of the question, Gough nonetheless answered yes. Bray grumbled that was why the whole thing was a ridiculous idea.

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You might say that if we sign up, our elected officials made that decision. Sure. They don't, however, get much, if any, say on the bureaucrats and committees that subsequently investigate and make pronouncements as to whether we are recalcitrant defalcators who require international admonishment and humiliation.

To preserve the UN, to give it a chance of rebuilding credibility, there are a few things that merit consideration. First, look after and possibly boost the co-operative stuff.

Then get stuck into the part where people unelected by citizens make their life's work telling the world what it ought to do.

There's no doubt good work has been done. But that doesn't excuse the waste and overreach. Counterbalancing the good is a big bucket of insidious bureaucratic creep. Is there anyone who can honestly argue that the World Health Organisation hasn't, to put it politely, got above itself?

A simple change might help. Set the pronouncements for humanity part of the UN up as a body that produces something akin to nighttime garden lights of guidance. But the bottom line will be that in every country, they will decide what's good for them.