defUNct

Australia's ambassador to the UN has returned home and now that he's back he's calling it like it is:

Mr Dauth said that while bodies such as the UN's food program and children's fund UNICEF were working, the General Assembly was not.

"The General Assembly is defunct," Mr Dauth told ABC radio.

"No debate there carries with it any practical action or decision or agreement or compromise.

"The evidence at the UN in the last year has been pretty bleak on WMD, on arms control," Mr Dauth said.

"We had the nuclear non-proliferation treaty review conference in May that failed to come up with an agenda - a month of negotiations that failed to come up with an agenda.

"We had the summit in September that despite vigorous negotiation, most of which I chaired, achieved nothing - not a single reference in the outcome document on issues relating to arms control and proliferation.

"That is an indictment of a global inter-governmental negotiating process that has gone badly wrong in New York.

Thanks to Mr Dauth for confirming what we already knew.