Latika M Bourke: As Australia loses hosting COP31, could Anthony Albanese helped secure climate summit?

Losing COP is a win for Anthony Albanese domestically, but it undermines Labor’s facile claim that they were “back” on the world stage, merely for ejecting the Morrison government from office in 2022. After months of tortured negotiations that culminated in Belem this week, Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen announced a tentative breakthrough. The details are still being finalised. But so far, it looks like he will be COP President, meaning he can negotiate the outcome of 2026’s round of global climate talks, which the US will boycott, as it did this year. But in 2026, the COP President will not host the conference in their own country. That event will go to Turkey. Instead, world leaders will spend an inordinate amount of money, time and crucially, emissions, flying to the Pacific for a “pledging event” beforehand. The optics of requiring world leaders to emit untold emissions to jet to the Pacific for pre-COP, and then to Turkey as they lecture voters about the need to pay more for green measures to prevent the planet from cooking, will be diabolical for the global climate agenda. This Bowen compromise is yet another example of how the green agenda’s loudest advocates are often its worst enemies. But at home in Australia, it is a domestic win for Anthony Albanese. The Prime Minister has barely spoken about or campaigned for the COP31 conference to be held in Adelaide, compared to, say, his crusade to have world leaders sign on to the under-16s social media ban. On the latter, he has campaigned relentlessly both at home and abroad, holding a special event at the United Nations General Assembly in September, which was attended by sympathetic European and Pacific leaders. But when it comes to COP, Mr Albanese has always given the air of someone who half-heartedly backed the idea of hosting world leaders and tens of thousands of people associated with Big Green Inc in the South Australian capital. While the Catholic-raised PM found time to head to the Vatican to watch the new Pope being inaugurated shortly after his re-election, he has never found the energy, desire or time to attend a COP conference in his four years as Australia’s leader, despite wanting to host one himself as Prime Minister, and as he has claimed, for the Pacific. He didn’t even bother turning up in 2022 - the year of his election to power and which also saw Australia launch its bid to host COP31 at the Egypt summit in Sharm el-Sheikh. Many Australians might sympathise. But it’s just that one year prior, Mr Albanese, when opposition leader, said that if Scott Morrison didn’t go to the Glasgow summit in 2021, it would be out of shame. The process for securing a COP conference is ridiculous, as it requires consensus that a single country can veto, as Turkey did with its bid, arguing it was the true bridge between developed and developing countries. Despite a majority in favour of Australia’s bid, Turkey refused to budge, which is where Mr Albanese’s personal diplomacy might have made a difference. Erdogan’s stubbornness is legendary. In 2022, when Sweden applied to join NATO, pro-Russian Hungary and Turkey initially refused to let the Scandinavian nation into the defence alliance. Getting Erdogan to agree took untold shuttle diplomacy involving European leaders and then NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg, who finally struck a deal. Turkey ratified Sweden’s NATO bid in 2024, two years after Stockholm applied and one year after Sweden’s neighbour Finland was admitted. By contrast, Mr Albanese’s diplomatic efforts extended to a letter-writing campaign. Despite briefings to Australian media that Mr Albanese would meet President Erdogan in New York, the pair did not cross paths. And in refusing to attend NATO for two years in a row, despite being one of only four Indo-Pacific countries invited to its annual summit, Mr Albanese also missed opportunities to talk to Mr Erdogan face-to-face, including one as recently as June. The Prime Minister’s two dispatches failed to move the Turkish hardman, and the result is Australia landing the COP Presidency, with the actual summit taking place in Turkey. “Obviously, it would be great if Australia could have it all, but we can’t have it all,” Mr Bowen said from Belem. Perhaps, but can anyone say that Mr Albanese did everything he could to get it over the line, including making a one-on-one with Mr Erdogan a priority? Whilst the worst-case scenario, the summit defaulting to Bonn, Germany, because of Australia’s failed diplomacy — has been averted — Mr Bowen acknowledged that many would be disappointed with the current outcome. But he said both Australia and Turkey had had to make significant concessions. But all in all, this result, when it comes to raw electoral politics, is a perfect outcome for Mr Albanese. He avoids the political pile-on that would come from the Coalition, now free from pretending it ever wanted to pursue net-zero decarbonisation goals. “Turkey is doing the Australian government a big favour, because we had a $12 billion deficit last year,” Opposition Leader Sussan Ley told the ABC. “We’re heading to a $42 billion deficit this coming year. “And meanwhile, this Prime Minister wants to spend $2 billion on hosting a talk fest here in this country and at the same time can’t look Australians in the eye and answer a simple question, which is, when will energy prices come down?” There will be no images of private jets parked on tarmacs in Adelaide, and reports of leaders telling Australia to stop mining coal, extracting gas and to build more wind farms faster. And Mr Albanese knows that no one will be crying on the streets begging for a conference of elites to be held on Australian soil during a cost-of-living and housing affordability crisis. Little wonder that he hailed it as an “outstanding outcome.” “The fact that we have managed to secure a significant role for the Pacific as part of this, that’s enough to offset the loss of Adelaide as host,” the Prime Minister said. By contrast, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskus said the process and result was “obscene.” Mr Albanese’s brand of politics is a winner, as the May result showed, but that doesn’t mean it’s not brutally cynical.