Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22344850-5007146,00.html
By Greg Sheridan
September 02, 2007 01:00am
ALL this week and next weekend, Sydney will host the biggest and most important international meeting in the history of Australia.
The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum will attract cabinet ministers and government leaders from 21 economies around the Asia Pacific.
There will inevitably be some traffic disruption in and around central Sydney, but it is truly in a noble cause.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, was right when he said that if there is any real disturbance, the people to blame for this are not the APEC delegates, but the violent demonstrators themselves.
It is a tragedy of modern democracies that violent extremists exploit their freedoms to try to shut down free discussion.
It is a bitter fruit of the anti-democratic, totalitarian, fascist, street-fighting qualities of modern demonstrators that, for international delegates, it can be easier to have a free discussion in Beijing than Sydney.
It would, of course, be madness for a proud, democratic nation like Australia to give in to the anti-democratic forces by not holding meetings such as APEC.
All Australians should be proud of APEC.
It is the most consequential organisation we have created and also the most important organisation of which we are a member.
Bob Hawke founded APEC in 1989.
It began life with a meeting of foreign ministers in Canberra.
It was, as its name suggested, devoted to furthering economic co-operation and free trade.
These are good goals in themselves and APEC has done a lot of good work towards them.
But there was always a deeper strategy. The Asia Pacific was weak in institutions.
Before APEC came along, there was not even an institution in which Chinese and Japanese leaders regularly met.
Australia belonged to no natural regional grouping.
The only two significant bodies of which we were a member were the Commonwealth and the South Pacific Forum.
In APEC's first few years, Australia successfully negotiated the entrance of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate economies.
This, in itself, was a minor miracle, as China normally won't join anything to which Taiwan belongs.
Then Paul Keating, after he became Prime Minister, conceived of massively ramping up APEC's power and clout by holding regular APEC leaders' meetings.
Since then, APEC has done good, steady work and sometimes spectacular, specific interventions in particular situations.
In 1994, in Indonesia, APEC leaders committed themselves to a vision of free trade in the Asia Pacific.
The vision hasn't come completely to fruition, but tariff barriers and other impediments to free trade have been greatly reduced in that time.
That is one reason Asia continues to be the fastest-growing region in the world - and why Australia is so prosperous today.
APEC is an economic co-operation body, not a security organisation, but leaders can address any issue they like.
The 1999 APEC meeting was critical in diplomacy between the US, Indonesia and Australia, which led to Australia's East Timor intervention.
APEC provides an opportunity for leaders to hold private meetings, without all the pre-meeting negotiation involved in one leader visiting another's country.
At difficult times between the US and China, their presidents have been able to meet at APEC and often defuse the tensions between their nations.
APEC is wholly a good thing.
The demonstrators trying to wreck it are nuts.
By Greg Sheridan
September 02, 2007 01:00am
ALL this week and next weekend, Sydney will host the biggest and most important international meeting in the history of Australia.
The Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation forum will attract cabinet ministers and government leaders from 21 economies around the Asia Pacific.
There will inevitably be some traffic disruption in and around central Sydney, but it is truly in a noble cause.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, was right when he said that if there is any real disturbance, the people to blame for this are not the APEC delegates, but the violent demonstrators themselves.
It is a tragedy of modern democracies that violent extremists exploit their freedoms to try to shut down free discussion.
It is a bitter fruit of the anti-democratic, totalitarian, fascist, street-fighting qualities of modern demonstrators that, for international delegates, it can be easier to have a free discussion in Beijing than Sydney.
It would, of course, be madness for a proud, democratic nation like Australia to give in to the anti-democratic forces by not holding meetings such as APEC.
All Australians should be proud of APEC.
It is the most consequential organisation we have created and also the most important organisation of which we are a member.
Bob Hawke founded APEC in 1989.
It began life with a meeting of foreign ministers in Canberra.
It was, as its name suggested, devoted to furthering economic co-operation and free trade.
These are good goals in themselves and APEC has done a lot of good work towards them.
But there was always a deeper strategy. The Asia Pacific was weak in institutions.
Before APEC came along, there was not even an institution in which Chinese and Japanese leaders regularly met.
Australia belonged to no natural regional grouping.
The only two significant bodies of which we were a member were the Commonwealth and the South Pacific Forum.
In APEC's first few years, Australia successfully negotiated the entrance of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan as separate economies.
This, in itself, was a minor miracle, as China normally won't join anything to which Taiwan belongs.
Then Paul Keating, after he became Prime Minister, conceived of massively ramping up APEC's power and clout by holding regular APEC leaders' meetings.
Since then, APEC has done good, steady work and sometimes spectacular, specific interventions in particular situations.
In 1994, in Indonesia, APEC leaders committed themselves to a vision of free trade in the Asia Pacific.
The vision hasn't come completely to fruition, but tariff barriers and other impediments to free trade have been greatly reduced in that time.
That is one reason Asia continues to be the fastest-growing region in the world - and why Australia is so prosperous today.
APEC is an economic co-operation body, not a security organisation, but leaders can address any issue they like.
The 1999 APEC meeting was critical in diplomacy between the US, Indonesia and Australia, which led to Australia's East Timor intervention.
APEC provides an opportunity for leaders to hold private meetings, without all the pre-meeting negotiation involved in one leader visiting another's country.
At difficult times between the US and China, their presidents have been able to meet at APEC and often defuse the tensions between their nations.
APEC is wholly a good thing.
The demonstrators trying to wreck it are nuts.
