Those leaders in the silly shirts

The Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders meet in the city of Sydney in September. It is sometime better known as the meeting of the leaders with the funny shirts.

There are 21 heads of government of Pacific Rim economies coming for the meeting. APEC does not only mean traffic chaos, security threats and silly shirts. It is, in fact, an economic forum for a group of Pacific Rim countries to discuss matters on regional economy, cooperation, trade and investment. Together, these countries represent about 60 per cent of the world economy. Ministers from the member economies meet on a continual basis throughout the year. The activities are coordinated by the APEC Secretariat based in Singapore.

The residents of the city of Sydney are against any attempts to douse fear that the city will be turned into a fortress. Prime Minister John Howard and NSW Premier Morris Iemma assured people the international leaders' meeting will not lead to chaos and widespread travel restrictions. Only a small portion of the CBD would be closed to public. "Police would have extensive powers to stop and search people. Any suggestion that the city's going to be locked down is completely false however; security will be tough - as is needed to be. I don't make apologies for any of that," the PM said.

The cost to taxpayers of hosting APEC is now reaching $330 million, $170 million of which will be spent on security arrangements. There are even greater costs to democratic rights, and civil liberties. Michael Head, from the University of Western Sydney, recently explained that "changes to the Commonwealth Defence Act last year disturbingly enhanced the government's power to mobilise troops internally and give the military unprecedented domestic powers including the right to interrogate civilians, and seize documents. The troops also have wider and legally protected rights to use lethal force".

It was Australian Labour Prime Minister Bob Hawke who, in January 1989, called for more effective economic cooperation across the Asia Pacific region. This led to the first meeting of APEC in Canberra, capital of Australia, in November. Attended by political ministers from 12 countries, the meeting concluded with commitments for future annual meetings.

APEC actually stands for achieving a complete free trade objective in the Asian Pacific region, and also discusses issues like security and terrorism. It will be the most significant meeting Australia has ever hosted and a big boost to the image of Mr Howard facing a crucial federal election soon afterwards.

The APEC member economies are: Australia, Brunei, Darussalam, Canada, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, the United States of America and Vietnam.

APEC countries account for 60 per cent of global energy demand, so it is fitting that a major focus of the Sydney APEC meeting is energy, security and climate change. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to lead to real environmental benefits as most of the counties reject the UN multilateral Kyoto Protocol climate change strategy and advocate "clean coal" and nuclear energy as solutions to global warming. Australia and the USA are strong supporters of these solutions.

Mr Howard has been labelled as a climate change sceptic and criticised as a latecomer to the debate for not recognising climate change in specific policy terms until this year. He objects to this and says he is a climate change realist and denied he was ever a sceptic.

With an election looming, Mr Howard flagged climate change as the main talking point of the APEC summit. "This will be the first and best opportunity for the two largest polluters in the world - the United States and China - to come together," the PM said.