G20: Winners and Others

The G20 is not a democracy. Neither is it a sporting competition, a chess game, a reality television show, a raffle or a pie eating contest. In fact, the G20 should not be a competition of any kind. It’s extraordinary, then, that we have a clear loser, and it’s the captain of the home team.

Prime Minster Tony Abbott has been comprehensively conquered on every front during the past week, but his greatest defeat is no-one’s fault but his own.  By all accounts, he got his G20 welcome speech wrong, dismissing climate change and world affairs to focus instead on his domestic agenda.

Tony Abbott at the G20 Summit

The real problem for Prime Minister Abbott was context. In isolation, the Abbott Speech was the wrong content for the audience and the event, and was delivered in his trademark halting cadence. Just hours earlier, American President Barack Obama delivered a masterful speech at the University of Queensland, and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s outlined his priorities for this G20 Summit. Both leaders emphasised that climate change must be addressed first and foremost. 

The official G20 schedule afforded Tony Abbott, as host, the honour of speaking first and welcoming the world’s leaders to Brisbane. So what happened?

Firstly, the timing was dangerous. Leaving a ‘free’ morning on Day One allowed participants to make their own plans for that half day. President Obama saw a window in which to schedule a speech, unrelated to G20 matters, during that free morning. He spoke about his own global agenda, which includes human rights, climate change, the world’s response to the Ebola crisis, focus on youth and the matter of equality for women and LGBT groups.

President Obama is a brilliant orator, with some of the best speechwriters in the world. In contrast, public speaking is not Tony Abbott's strong point, and while the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet employs close to40 communications staff, costing well over four million dollars annually, he still prefers to write his own speeches.  The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen explained this and other weaknesses: 

In Abbott’s office, a team of speechwriters co-ordinated by Paul Ritchie helps the Prime Minister with his speeches. Using the input as a guide, not a script, the PM prefers to write his own speeches, especially the more important ones.

The results were on show yesterday for the world’s leaders to see.

The second issue is quite simply, stubbornness. If Mr Abbott is a competent speechwriter and if he is the great intellect that Ms Albrechtsen suggests, he would have been able to make quick adjustments to the speech he delivered to world leaders yesterday afternoon. It doesn’t look as though any last minute adjustments were made…unless his original speech was explicitly against taking action of climate change, in which case, Mr Abbott has probably jumped to Plan B and picked up a draft he had only half finished, planned to deliver to the local branch of the Liberal Party at their Christmas Party. 

If, on the other hand, the welcome we heard from Mr Abbott yesterday was the speech he intended to deliver, Liberal boss Brian Loughnane needs to take Tony Abbott by the shirtfront and introduce him to his communications team. It was inappropriate for the occasion.

President Obama loves Australia, but I'll bet he says that to all his allies.

The third issue, and the one which underpins the rest, is the question of whether Tony Abbott has the potential to be a Statesman. He is consistently out of step with most of the rest of the world’s leaders on the big issues, as illustrated by the stark differences between the content of Obama’s remarks at UQ and Abbott’s address to G20 leaders. Furthermore, he seems to possess the political instincts of an potato. His relentlessly thuggish style made him a powerful opposition leader, yet is unsuited to that of a leader.

Finally, there’s shirtfronting. Everyone was waiting to see how Mr Howard would deal with Mr Putin, how Mr Putin would deal with Mr Abbott, and how everyone else would deal with the fallout. Ultimately, very little happened, yet it cast a surreal and unstatesmanlike shadow across the event. Tony Abbott’s occasional lapses of control are well known in Australia, so really, anything from minutes of furious silence to a bit of physical argy-bargy between the Russian Judo master and the Australian former boxer was possible.

Tony has been able to lead the members of his own government on most issues – Paid Parental Leave notwithstanding – and the committed Liberal voters have largely remained committed to his policies. He hasn’t really converted anyone else though, and his net approval rating is nothing to rave about. It remains to be seen if this disastrous performance as host of the G20 will hurt his approval further.

But enough about losers. Did anyone actually win the G20? Here are my picks:

Gold:          Barack Obama for brilliant political strategy in grabbing and controlling the agenda

Silver:        Angela Merkel for visiting some of Brisbane’s Friday night watering holes and taking selfies with the crowds

Bronze:      Margie Abbott for showing up to wrangle the female spouses and koalas

Commendation: Brisbane, for doing a great job, despite being deserted.