Liberal MP Dave Sharma says Australia’s continued funding of the World Health Organisation should only occur on the condition of “necessary reforms”. US President Donald Trump on Wednesday halted his nation’s funding of the World Health Organisation, accusing the UN body of mishandling the coronavirus pandemic.
Mr Sharma told Sky News that Australia, a significant donor to WHO, would have “more to say” on the institution’s response to the crisis.
"This reckoning has been coming for some time. I think a lot of countries, Australia included, have been less than impressed with the WHO’s performance,” the Liberal MP said.
Mr Sharma said it was “pretty obvious” countries like South Korea, Japan and the US will band together with Australia to demand “significant reforms to how the WHO operates”.
"I think we should make sure we condition our future funding on necessary reforms,” he said.
"We will need to settle on those reforms with a group of other countries, like-minded countries as well, but this is generally how we drive change in the international system... we make our continued contributions, continued support for the international organisations, contingent upon reforms that must be done."
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