Turkey to host after Australia bid fails, Albanese calls comprise deal ‘outstanding’

South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas said while he understood the outcome of an “obscene” UN process, the federal government needed to explain why its strategy had changed to prioritize a continued role for the Pacific over Adelaide.

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“These are questions that the federal government needs to answer about why they took the negotiating position,” he said.

Albanese, who raised eyebrows among climate campaigners when he did not visit Belem to support Australia’s bid, declared the result a victory for Australia and the region.

The Prime Minister said Australia finalized its offer to Türkiye after consulting with Pacific leaders, including Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape and Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rambuka.

He said the pre-COP31 meeting at the Pacific Islands Forum was an “extraordinary” outcome.

“This will enable us to call on world leaders to ensure that the issues facing this region, the existence of island states like Tuvalu and Kiribati, the challenges of our oceans – all these issues are front and centre,” Albanese said. he said.

Tuvalu’s former prime minister, Bikenibeu Paeniu, told AFP the decision showed “Australia has not committed to climate justice”.

Each year, around 280 people from the small island nation can move to Australia on a special visa to escape the impact of rising sea levels.

“Pacific countries must seriously reorganize their relations with Australia,” Paeniu said. he said.

Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, Justin Tkatchenko, also expressed disappointment, telling AFP: “We’re not all happy. And we’re disappointed that it turned out this way.”

At this year’s COP30 in Belem, 83 countries from the Pacific, Africa, Asia and Latin America called for a common roadmap to divest the world from fossil fuels.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific CEO David Ritter said Australia was notably absent from the press conference calling for the practice to be phased out.

Opposition Leader Sussan Ley celebrated the bid’s failure, saying the loss would save on hosting costs.

“The fact that this government is even considering spending $2 billion of taxpayers’ money on this app shows how wrong its priorities are,” he said at a press conference in Melbourne.

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Greens leader Larissa Waters has argued that the government does not actually want to host COP31 and that it would shed an unwanted light on Australia’s fossil fuel production.

Pacific Minister Pat Conroy described the result as a “good outcome” for Australia and the Pacific.

In a speech in Newcastle on Thursday night, Conroy criticized the Coalition for abandoning a target to cut carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.

He described the decision as “the biggest capitulation of national security credibility by conservative parties since Menzies advocated a peace treaty with Hitler 10 days after his invasion of Poland, or since Menzies opposed the expansion of the Australian military before the Second World War”.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s Pacific chief Shiva Gounden said it was disappointing that Australia had lost hosting rights, but the decision was less important than a meaningful outcome from the talks.

“The Pacific’s fight for survival does not depend on a single hosting decision,” he said.

With Bloomberg and Matthew Knott

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