You can tell that Kevin Rudd is popular at the moment just look at the pictures. A front-page newspaper photograph last week showed the PM seconds before he went up the steps to his aircraft and flew off to the G8 Summit in Hokkaido, Japan. It looked as if Rudd, gazing around the empty tarmac, had suddenly spotted a crowd of old friends who'd turned out to wish him luck. Naturally, and because he's that kind of guy, Rudd began smiling broadly and lifted his hand to enthusiastically wave back.
Images convey impressions, but this doesn't mean they reveal the truth. There were, alas, no surging crowds of acolytes, seeking eagerly to grasp the hem of Rudd's robe as he passed by. Nor had he passed choirs singing his praises while others scattered petals at his feet as he walked by. But Rudd understands the processes of public relations and he knew, instinctively, what was required for the cameras. Aware that a photo showing him doing something is much more interesting than a picture of boring reality, Rudd had looked around, paused for half a second, and manufactured his response a soaring wave that was rapidly captured by the snappers.
Nothing wrong with this. It may even be that Rudd fancied that he'd heard some call that justified such an effervescent return of greetings. However, it's important not to get image and reality confused, and the G8 meeting Rudd was travelling to provides a good example of how some people seem incapable of distinguishing between the real world and the smoke and mirrors tricks of the illusionists.
The organisation itself is out of date. Without China and Brazil as integral members of the forum, it can't represent the distribution of world economic power. Without Mexico and India it doesn't represent the future. So what, exactly, is Australia's role? According to the CIA, the world's eight biggest economies produce something like $US37.2billion worth of goods each year (adjusted for parity). Australia's GDP, using the same measurements, is about $US760billion not insignificant perhaps, but hardly as substantial as South Korea's GDP of $US1201billion. And then consider growth. Australia's economy is firing along at just under 4 per cent. Russia is managing double that, and India's growth rate is more like 9 per cent.
Now exactly why are these other leaders going to be interested in the thoughts of our new PM?
It's important to keep such numbers in focus in terms of Rudd's recent global criss-crossing. Everyone expected when he came into office that he'd find some way of asserting his personality on the world stage, and he has. Signing on to the Bali agreement made sense, and it was also symbolically important that, as the new PM, Rudd signalled Australia's newfound environmental credentials. Trips to the United States and China were to be expected. However, it's very difficult to see that Rudd's brief opportunity to address G8 leaders has contributed anything at all to the gross net total of human happiness. Or anything else for that matter.
Rudd loves setting goals and then expecting others to show progress towards meeting these objectives. So it seems quite reasonable to ask him exactly what plan he had in mind when he originally decided to go to Hokkaido. Yes, the pictures show he spoke, over cocktails, to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and China's President Hu Jintao. He addressed (very briefly) the leaders of the world's major economies, and no one (apparently) fell asleep. But what did Rudd actually manage to achieve? I think you'd have great difficulty arguing that, if he hadn't flown to Japan, that the world would be a vastly different place to the way it is now.
Accumulating frequent flyer miles in the RAAF fleet is all very well, but that's really what foreign ministers are there for. The charge often thrown at diplomats is that all they do is talk we expected Rudd to be about getting things done. Perhaps he still remains a diplomat at heart. If so, he needs to decide pretty quickly to whom he'll be handing over so that he can continue to travel around the world.
On his way back, of course, Rudd stepped back into the real world. He flew back via Malaysia, a place guaranteed to strip any hubris from Australian politicians and acclimatise them to the futile struggles in Canberra. Australia's relationship with Malaysia has been notoriously turbulent. Unfortunately Rudd, just like Paul Keating, has shown little awareness of the need to bother with Malaysian sensibilities. If Rudd had been serious about his idea for an Asia Pacific Community he would have first carefully broached the concept with Malaysia to get this significant ASEAN nation on board. Instead our supposedly diplomatic PM just blurted his idea out, with more regard for good publicity and headlines at home rather than practical implementation.
Nations such as China and Japan are far too polite to say the idea was rubbish, so it lingered. Then journalist Jim Middleton asked Malaysia's PM Abdullah Badawi last week what he thought about the concept. His suggested ''it may be better to develop existing institutions''. Or, in other words, ''forget it''.
On three recent occasions Rudd has stepped up to the diplomatic plate. When Rudd travelled to Europe for the NATO summit, we were told he was going to get the security organisation to refocus its efforts on Afghanistan. It didn't, and since then more Aussie soldiers have died. Strike One. Despite Rudd's trip to Hokkaido, the G8 has made no progress on agreements to combat climate change. His participation on the sidelines has achieved nothing. Strike Two. Finally, Malaysia now seems to be doing its best to scupper the Asia Pacific Community idea. Strike Three. A record such as this would not be guaranteed to achieve performance pay in the public sector.
Pretty pictures are all very well, but where's the substance?
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.
nicstuart@hotmail.com