NEW YORK: A moderate Malcolm Turnbull has emerged on to the world stage as the great multi-lateralist, celebrating global progress in securing higher living standards while praising the usually maligned United Nations for successes on climate change, arms control, and refugee assistance.

In his first-ever address to its General Assembly in New York, Mr Turnbull has dispensed with the usual conservative coolness towards the UN's perceived ineffectiveness and encroachment on nation states, to laud its performance in solving complex international problems.

"In less than a generation, billions have been lifted out of poverty and billions more enabled to connect to each other and to a world of knowledge and ideas in a manner barely imaginable a generation ago," he will say, according to speech notes provided.

"Economic freedom between markets and within them, supercharged by the Internet, innovation and technology, have enabled the longest run of economic progress in the history of the world."

With the exception of Syria in particular, he will assert that the UN has performed remarkably well.

"Over the past five years, the UN system has produced a global Arms Trade Treaty, a pivotal global agreement on climate change, a transformational set of Sustainable Development Goals, and a global blueprint for disaster-risk reduction."

While Tony Abbott was dubious, Mr Turnbull is an unrestrained enthusiast, branding the UN's field presence in deprived and strife-torn areas, "hugely important work".

"Whether it be vaccinating children, helping subsistence farmers to improve their crop yields, facilitating democratic elections or delivering emergency humanitarian support, they demonstrate the approach we need to take as we face the challenges of the future," he will say.

But he will also argue that more needs to be done on a plethora of problems, from the security threat to combating a new protectionism - including in the clamour for anti-Muslim immigration policies and for religious profiling proposed by Donald Trump and Pauline Hanson - neither of whom he named.

"We need strength - to respond firmly and decisively in the face of tyranny and abuse; to stand up to those who would seek to divide societies through terror, and against those who seek to exploit desperation to their benefit," he will say in a diplomatic slap at the Trump agenda.

"We need compassion – to assist those less fortunate than ourselves; and to help rebuild communities that have been devastated by war or natural disasters.

"And now, more than ever, we need to work together towards common solutions."

The Prime Minister named the proposed international caliphate of Islamic State (also called ISIL and Daesh) and the nuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula as the most pressing challenges for the international community.

His address, which in many ways was in lock-step with the positions of the progressive Obama Administration, came as Americans looked to be turning increasingly to the right after the terrorist attacks in New York and other states in recent days.

The populist Mr Trump has leapt on the bombings to depict the US border protection system as weak and cowed by political correctness. He has called for swift and severe justice for the bomber, as well as much more vigorous profiling of prospective migrants, and a complete ban on migration from countries with extremist views - essentially therefore, on Muslims.

And it seems Mr Turnbull and Barack Obama are fighting a losing battle.

A new Essential poll released on Wednesday found 49 per cent of Australians now support a ban on Muslim immigration, including 60 per cent of Coalition voters, 40 per cent of Labor voters and 34 per cent of Greens voters.

The most common factor were fears over terrorism, and a belief that Muslim migrants do not seek to integrate into society nor share Australian values. The poll was first conducted in early August and then repeated to ensure it was not a rogue.

"It's too a big a number to say it's an unrepresentative rump that should be shunned from polite society," Essential pollster Peter Lewis told Fairfax Media.

Mr Turnbull however, remained determined to push for tolerance and to argue for the potential for the UN to build global security, and climate policy.