It’s not often I’ve been able to claim I’m at the very centre of world affairs, but for once I’ve hit lucky. By coincidence, the very hotel where I’m staying in Brisbane (as part of a short theatre tour in Australia), is next door to the city’s convention centre, the epicentre of the forthcoming G20 summit, which begins on Friday.
Here, in a few days, the world’s foremost political leaders will meet in an effort to agree how best to manage affairs for billions of people. For Brisbane, the event is something of a coup. Until now it was merely known for being Australia’s third largest city, famous for skyscrapers, a river, a cricket stadium and little else.
All that is about to change. Brisbane is expecting 4,000 delegates and up to 3,000 media representatives, and the preparations reflect the scale and complexity of the civic operation. In recent days we’ve grown used to helicopters buzzing low over the city streets, while around 11pm each night the roads surrounding the convention centre are cordoned off.
Security barriers are being erected, diversions put in place, waste bins sealed and counter-terrorism exercises carried out in readiness for any unexpected emergency, while Friday, the first day of the summit, has been declared a public holiday, if only to ease city centre congestion. If they do nothing else, the good citizens of Brisbane will surely thank the politicians for their extra day off.
Not that the world leaders will be aware of it, for they have a couple of days here to come up with some agreement on how best to order the affairs of the world. But with so many issues jostling for attention, the problem is: what to tackle first?
Promoting stronger economic growth is high on the agenda, while ensuring the world’s collective finances are better prepared to deal with any future recession comes a close second. But what about the threat posed by ISIL? Or the Ukrainian crisis? And it’s a mark of just how much there is to discuss that the Ebola epidemic hardly gets a mention on the official agenda.
As for climate change, there’s a lot of talk as the conference approaches about increasing “energy efficiency”, but little appetite for any meaningful action. A reduction in emissions is a luxury few of the world’s economies can afford just now, and indeed, the Australian prime minister Tony Abbott declared publicly he did not want the agenda “cluttered by subjects that would distract from economic growth”.
While the US economy may be on the up, growth in China has slowed, and even Germany is looking fragile. Japan, meanwhile, continues to print money in an effort to pull itself out of the two lost decades of financial stagnation.
As with past summits, we can expect plenty of fine words and florid speeches. But it’s not the sleek sound bites up there on the podium that will produce any meaningful results. It will be the myriad meetings, discussions, memorandums of understanding and quiet handshakes made by countless diplomats and apparatchiks in anterooms and lobbies, far away from the scrutiny of the international media. They are the true protagonists, and the unsung heroes, of any such summit.
Whether the Brisbane G20 can deliver any significant outcome remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: whatever is decided here, poor old planet Earth will have to fend for itself for a few more years.
Meanwhile, it’s odd to think that the room in which I’ve spent the past two weeks lounging about on the balcony or idly flicking through the channels on the TV at the end of my bed, will soon be occupied by someone with a far more profound job spec.
Who will it be? A Secret Service agent? A leading financier? Who knows, even Vladimir Putin? Whoever it is, I only hope they have more success than I have had in working out how to operate the dishwasher. If they can’t manage that, what hope have they of saving the planet?
Michael Simkins is an actor and writer based in London
Twitter: @michael_simkins
