Australia fails to learn from history, loses UN climate summit to Turkey

Of course, on the virtual eve of a showdown, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (much more cautious than, say, Churchill on the Dardanelles) made it clear that Australia would not attack any beaches because of COP31, no matter how many of its allies sided with Australia.

He said on Tuesday that Australia would not veto Türkiye’s insistence on hosting the conference if the other country was “chosen”. However, it turned out that Türkiye would not be elected unless Australia made an election.

This was the raising of a white flag that confused Australia’s allies and nearly swamped the Adelaide enterprise.

Had Albanese had the opportunity to examine the byzantine rules of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change?

Under these so-called “consensus” rules, if neither Australia nor Türkiye were willing to accept, the conference would go to Bonn, Germany.

It doesn’t matter that the Germans didn’t actually want this particular victory. But hey, you want logic? This is the United Nations.

This left Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, stranded like a shipwrecked sailor on a half-submerged rock.

More precisely, he was stranded at COP30 in Belem, Brazil; Here he fully expected Australia to announce with great pomp that it had handed the Turks a solid defeat.

He had been sounding quite cheerful lately, like just over the weekend.

“It remains the case that Australia has the overwhelming support of the world to host COP31,” Bowen said.

Instead, he was relegated to an uneasy door stop on Thursday to announce what Türkiye was actually doing right before our eyes.

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Ah, but he announced a major concession.

Türkiye may be the host of COP31 and therefore its president by protocol, but he, Australia’s Chris Bowen, will be the chairman of the negotiations. Unfortunately, we are in Antalya.

This was apparently the agreement that enabled Australia to actually support Türkiye’s bid, along with plans to hold a series of pre-COP events in the South Pacific islands.