Australia wants more Asian, African and Latin American countries on the United Nations security council, and has condemned the world’s most powerful security body for its “glacial” pace of change.

Australia’s new ambassador to the UN, the former Liberal senator Mitch Fifield, told the UN general assembly the security council risked becoming an anachronism, and needed “to reform and evolve to respond effectively to the challenges of the 21st century”.

“The international rules-based order upholding global stability, security and prosperity is under significant strain,” he said. “Now more than ever we must urgently find ways to ensure the council can act as it must to address the challenges of today and maintain international peace and security.”

Fifield said reform was “well overdue” and that a revamped council needed to reflect “contemporary geopolitical realities, with greater representation for Asia, Africa and Latin America”.

The controversial veto power – granted to the five permanent members: the nuclear-armed US, China, Russia, the UK and France – needed to be reformed “so that its use is more transparent and limited”.

“We regret that progress on reform of the council has been incremental to date,” he said. “It has moved at a glacial pace, if it has moved at all.”

Australia has sat as a non-permanent member of the security council five times, most recently in 2013–14.

Its reform is one of the UN’s longest-running and – to date – insoluble debates. Alongside the P5, 10 countries representing different regions of the world sit on the council for two-year terms. Non-permanent members do not have the veto power.

The extraordinary powers and accompanying influence granted to the P5 are not rights those countries have demonstrated any willingness to relinquish.

The veto power on non-procedural matters, exercised most by Russia (and its forerunner, the USSR), not only allows already powerful countries to stymie action by the council, but even deters global security matters from being debated.

The P5 members also have a power colloquially known as the “double veto”: the power to use a veto to define what is non-procedural in order to veto it.

Critics of the unchallengeable status given to the P5 members – unchanged since 1965 – say the council’s decision-making is sclerotic, unwieldy and unreflective of the modern world.

Advocates for a reformed council argue the current body reflects a post-second world war international landscape, fails to acknowledge the rising power of populous nations such as India and Brazil, and does not have a single African representative.

At Monday’s debate at the UN general assembly, Alie Kabba, the representative of Sierra Leone, speaking on behalf of the African group, said Africa should have two permanent seats “with all the prerogatives and privileges of permanent membership”. Kabba said Africa opposed the veto, but if it existed it should be available to all permanent council members.

The French representative, Nicolas de Riviere, said a reformed council could be as large as 25 permanent and non-permanent members, and that Germany, India, Brazil and Japan should hold permanent seats. He said the veto power should be suspended in the face of mass atrocities to avoid council inaction in a humanitarian crisis.

Zhang Jun, China’s permanent representative to the UN, said Beijing supported “reasonable and necessary reform”.

“Priority should be given to increasing representation and say of developing countries, especially African countries,” he said, but did not mention the veto power.

Russia said the veto prerogative could not be removed, arguing it had stopped the council from embarking on “dubious ventures”. The US also opposed altering it.

India, long an advocate for a permanent seat on the council, said the council was obsolete and noted it had been 11 years since the start of intergovernmental negotiations began on reform.

New Delhi’s representative, Syed Akbaruddin, compared security council reform to the Greek myth of Sisyphus: “Cursed by the gods to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back down, dooming him to fruitless toil for eternity.”