Prime Minister Julia Gillard will urge world leaders to set new goals to fight global poverty through green jobs and clean energy.
One of more than 100 world leaders at the United Nations sustainable development conference in Rio de Janeiro, Ms Gillard is scheduled to deliver her official address about 8.15am (AEST) on Friday.
Given that the leaders had "already lowered other important ambitions", it made it all the more important that the summit sign off on a new agreement to put in place "sustainable development goals" (SDGs), the prime minister will say.
Ms Gillard and the Australian delegation have pushed hard for the SDGs to replace the millennium development goals (MDGs), which were put in place to fight global poverty in 2000 and expire in 2015.
The prime minister during the UN summit was appointed to co-chair a special task force to oversee the final years of the MDGs and ensure all nations meet their commitments.
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"Everyone here knows that collective action is hard - and that global collective action can be exquisitely hard," she will say.
"(But) everyone here also knows that targets work ... (and) set the firmest possible basis for long-term success."
Australia's aid budget is set to increase 60 per cent in the next five years, even though the federal budget delayed meeting its own MDG by one year.
Ms Gillard will say Australia is "playing its part" in addressing climate change and creating green jobs by putting in place a price on carbon from July 1.
Australia was also putting a new focus on the health of the oceans and managing the "blue economy" that they underpin.
"We are not here this week just to talk to each other. We're here to decide, to agree - and then to act," the prime minister will say.
The final day of the summit is expected to adopt a 50-page statement which includes a commitment to working on the detail of the new SDGs, which have the endorsement of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
On the second day of the summit, Ms Gillard addressed a breakfast function where she announced $33 million for action to protect fish stocks and conserve marine ecosystems, working with Asia-Pacific nations.
She also addressed a UN women's forum, where she called inequality between men and women a "serious economic blindspot", worth an estimated $47 billion a year.
Ms Gillard, Australia's first female prime minister, lamented the fact that only 10 per cent of UN member nations are led by women, including two per cent of Pacific nations.
