They were all there. Representatives from Indigenous peoples in northern Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Torres Strait, the ACTU, employer groups, investor and climate groups on the ground in Belem, Brazil for COP30.
One by one they lined up to deliver the same basic message to the scrum of mostly international media: Australia is ready, willing and able to host the world at the next international climate conference.
Australia’s political leadership were notably absent. The press conference itself had been called by Richie Merzian, CEO of Clean Energy Investor Group and a former Australian government representative on climate change, to fill an obvious vacuum that had developed around the bid, and prosecute Australia’s case to host COP31 in Adelaide, Australia.
“The people behind me are gathered because they want to see a COP finally take place in the Asia Pacific, finally take place on the only continent that hasn’t hosted it, with the longest running culture and civilization, they want to see a COP hosted Down Under,” Merzian said.
Behind them, in the main junction of the exhibition hall, the Australian and Turkish pavilions stood side by side. The dynamic has been a source of amusement for conference attendees.
Duelling queues snake out from the Australian and Turkish pavilions; one for tea and Turkish delight, the other for coffee.
The Australian pavilion might be the only place in Belem to get a flat white from an actual espresso machine, but the Turks had gone the extra mile of shipping in a calligrapher to beautifully draw the names of conference goers in Turkish script.
It was exemplary of the glitz Turkiye was bringing to lobbying, a tactic Australia should have easily overcome. Both countries are major fossil fuel exporters, but Turkiye itself is closely aligned with Russia on energy policy and oil producer Azerbaijan, the host of last year’s COP, where the president described methane gas as a “gift from god”.
There hasn’t been a COP held in Oceania since 2007. The Australian bid has the support of its First Nations people, and its Pacific neighbours – a relationship the Labor government has been working to repair as part of its foreign policy since it came to power.
Australia remains one of the world’s largest coal and gas suppliers, but it is making some effort to create certain facts on the ground. South Australia famously boasts at least 75% renewable energy and is aiming for 100 per cent net renewables in just two years time.
Other states are slowly building out their own capacity. Australia, importantly, remains a stable, functioning democracy at a time when democratic institutions are being demolished worldwide. It also has the infrastructure and organisational capacity to host such a gathering of world leaders – it just had to want to.
Behind the scenes the Department of Climate Change Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has begun logistical planning, with secondments arranged so work can begin immediately and Minister Chris Bowen has been pushing hard for the bid.
The notable absence of Anthony Albanese and other senior Australian government ministers, however, has left a vacuum in the face of Turkish brinkmanship that presents a choice: either we host COP or it goes to Germany.
To the rest of the world, it increasingly looks like Australia has been rich in words, but light on deeds.
In the lead up to the event, Albanese flagged that he would attend if his counterpart, Turkish President Recep Erdogan attended to discuss the bid. Erdogan did not attend, and so neither did Albanese, but the Turkish President did send his deputy in his place.
Australia sent a junior minister with no public profile to represent it during the critical first days, with Bowen expected to arrive going into the second week. To resolve the deadlock, Albanese wrote directly to Erdogan to state the importance of Australia hosting COP. The Turkish president was unmoved.
Speaking to reporters in Sydney on Sunday, Albanese reported that he had received a response to his letter.
“He is maintaining his position in response to Australia maintaining our position,” Albanese said.
In diplomatic and civil society circles in Belem, Australia’s actions are being read as a diplomatic and political miscalculation that signalled a lack of resolve. The timing, by global standards, couldn’t have been worse. When the world needed Australia to show up, its leadership has largely stayed home.
So too has the Australian media, with two notable exceptions. Appearing to take their cues from the country’s political leadership, and only understanding the global issue of climate change through the lens of domestic Australian politics, the focus has been decidedly internal.
As the world meets to discuss what it will do to address an existential threat to continued human prosperity, most Australian reporting has focussed on the potential cost of hosting COP and the Coalition’s latest act of political self-harm.
A broader outlook might find a shifting global power dynamic. In previous years, China, the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter would normally be found somewhere down the back.
No longer. Now it is centre stage, Oil producing countries, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan may have posted up just outside the entrance, but it is China which has pride of place in the central junction with one of the biggest, most prominent pavilions.
As U.S. President Donald Trump has called climate change a “con job”, pulled out of the Paris Agreement and sought to bully and cajole U.S. allies into buying more fossil fuel, rich developed nations have grown notably uneasy about their commitments to addressing climate change, let alone a global phase out of oil, gas and coal.
China, meanwhile, has filled the vacuum. The country today makes four-in-five of all solar panels and over two thirds of all electric vehicles. Its mass production of green tech is starting to slick its thirst for fossil fuels with Chinese petroleum demand down 9% in October on the back of widespread electric vehicle adoption. Moreover, its exports are so cheap they are now flooding into developing economies.
And at COP30 in Belem, those staffing the Chinese pavilion are happy to talk about the country has matched words with deeds, especially as the United States has marginalised itself at a time of slow, but irreversible change.
Where this leaves Australia, caught between its largest trading partner and biggest military ally, remains unclear – but if one thing remains true, its that the world is run by those who turn up.
