Australia can win big international bids when it wants. This was an omnishambles

It was left to an ashen-faced Chris Bowen to appear before media in Brazil to explain how Australia had managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in its bid to host next year’s United Nations climate talks.

Ever since Australia and Turkey announced their rival bids in 2022, Australia had been seen as the obvious winner. It had overwhelming support in the UN and the backing of the Pacific nations most vulnerable to climate change.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Perth at the time, and focused on a trip to South Africa for another diplomatic event, the upcoming G20 meetings, and was determined to put a positive spin on the outcome.

Asked on ABC radio about the last-minute loss, Albanese celebrated an “outstanding outcome”.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the only outstanding element of Australia’s effort was the gap Albanese had managed to put between himself and Belem – about 16,000 kilometres as the crow flies.

In fact, Albanese was talking up the concessions Bowen had managed to extract in last-minute negotiations.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris BowenCredit: Bloomberg, Getty, Alex Ellinghausen

According to the in-principle agreement still being hammered out in Brazil, Australia would bow out of the race entirely so that Turkey could host rather than see a pro-forma event held at the UN’s climate headquarters in Bonn, Germany.

The high-profile leaders’ meeting that traditionally runs before or during the first days of those talks would also be held in Turkey. And as host, Turkey would appoint the COP president to run the event and manage the mechanics of the world’s key multilateral machine to combat climate change for the succeeding year, as the rules dictated.

The concessions?

A pre-COP summit would be held somewhere in the Pacific next year, which Australia would use to extract finance from attendees to a Pacific Resilience Fund.

Bowen would serve at the talks in Turkey under the title of “president of negotiations”, with authority to set the negotiating agenda, appoint chairs and leads and prepare the draft decision text.

Australia’s goals in the bid, Bowen explained to media in Belem, had been to elevate the concerns of the Pacific and to act in the nation’s best interests. These goals would be served by those concessions, he said.

This is not nothing. Anyone who has watched UN climate negotiations up close knows the roles of those who drive them are powerful and significant. The Pacific will be devastated by Australia’s failure, but it will not turn down any finance that might be extracted at such a forum.

Bowen insists that, had he not blinked and had the meeting reverted to Bonn, the result would have been a rudderless meeting at which Australia and the Pacific would have had no control and no input.

“Some people will be disappointed in that outcome. Other people, of course, would be even more disappointed if it had gone to Bonn without a COP president in place. This is a better outcome than that.”

What went wrong for Australia is not yet entirely clear, but it is clear that the Australian effort never looked like the smooth, unified and energetic campaigns by which previous governments secured a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013 or installed former finance minister Mathias Cormann as secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2021.

For months, diplomatic observers were warning that Bowen did not appear to have the full and enthusiastic support of Albanese for the bid, nor the focus of Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the heft of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

It was noticed that Albanese did not attend the Brazil leaders’ meeting the week before this COP.

In the days leading up to the Australian surrender, Bowen was locked in negotiations in Brazil, but still voicing his determination to win the bid, while back in Australia, Albanese spoke like a man building himself an off-ramp.

“Let me make it clear – we’re not going anywhere,” Bowen said on Tuesday. “It’s the fight we’ve got to have because it is very much in Australia’s interests, and I believe in the world’s interest, having Australia as the president of COP31. That’s what we’re working on. That’s what we intend to do.”

A few hours later, Albanese told media in Australia, “If Australia is not chosen, if Turkey is chosen, we wouldn’t seek to veto that.”

Those two positions are not necessarily inconsistent, but the difference in tone was heard in Belem. Turkey was intransigent, Australia was faltering.

It is not clear how much difference late interventions by the prime minister would have made.

The process demands consensus, not overwhelming support, and Turkey simply would not concede.

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