I am still trying to understand the benefit to local residents of hosting APEC in Sydney. Sydneysiders have been effectively told that they won’t be welcome in their own city for over a week — so thoughtfully extended by two days by our good friend George W. Bush (God bless his soul!).
What have we got in return? With the CBD strangulated and transport crippled, there are certainly no economic benefits. In fact, The NSW Business Chamber of Commerce estimates a loss to the NSW economy of between $300 million and $1 billion.
For ordinary workers, we got just one measly day off, in return for over a week of inconvenience. I don’t understand how people of privilege such as John Howard and Jeff Kennett can refer to ordinary Australians in such disparaging (and ironic) terms as ‘the Chardonnay set’. As far as I am (and evidently much of Sydney is) concerned, there is no benefit from this exercise, either in the short– or longer– terms. And no, I don’t count ‘international prestige’ or any such wankiness as a real benefit.
Has it been worth it, to bend over backwards for someone so stupid that even other world leaders laugh at him? 
Can somebody please prove me wrong? All I see at the moment is a giant white elephant (particularly given the security blunders), but surely there must be more to it than that.
By the way, has anybody else noticed that the official APEC 2007 Web site does not work properly in Firefox? Probably because their ‘exclusive technology partner’ (read: government-authorised monopolist) is our good friend, Microsoft. What else would you expect from a mob that rules the words ‘Linux’ and ‘Unix’ to be ‘inappropriate language’? I have tested this myself, and it does appear to be deliberate: you can’t even fool it with simple alterations like adding spaces or dashes between the letters.
LotD: Chinese stock market regrets switching to Windows Vista
September 8th, 2007 at 6:55 pm
Yama,
Unfortunately, your very obvious dislike of Howard and Bush makes this post seem a little irrational.
First and foremost, APEC is an annual event and this is the first time it has been held in Australia since 1989. As a member of APEC it was Australia’s turn to host it, just like it was Vietnam’s turn last year, South Korea’s turn the year before, Chile’s turn the time before that and so on.
Secondly, the security was not just for the protection of George Bush. I’m not sure how many of the leaders of the 21 APEC members actually did turn up, but I do know that the leaders of China, Russia, and Japan did. Now, if the leader of any one of the leaders of the US, China, Russia or Japan was assassinated during APEC it would immediately lead to a world wide stock market crash that would wipe at least $150Mil off the Australian stock market in a single day.
Now, consider the potential instability if the Chinese leader was assassinated and Russia or Taiwan being blamed, or vice versa. There are at least 5 or 6 other very horrible possibilities and it is these kinds of possibilities that makes the security measures necessary.
Deal with it.
September 8th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
Anony,
If security was of primary concern, they would have hosted it in a more defensible location. The fact that they selected such a high-profile venue shows that this is just as much about international prestige as it is about anything else. There is no need to disrupt an entire city just for some visiting dignitaries.
I am not against APEC as an organisation, but I do dispute how the summit has been hosted this year. I suspect that the situation is similar for most APEC venues.
September 8th, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Funny that all the security crap doesn’t even work (http://thepipingshrike.blogspot.com/2007/09/stunt-master.html), but if Sydney still has ambitions to be a world city it will have to put up with this kind of disruption with more grace in future.
September 9th, 2007 at 1:04 am
I find the response of the officials after the arrest to be the most embarrassing of the whole fiasco. If you look at the many times which they said ‘serious’ and ‘indeed’, you being to see a bigger picture how much backtracking the state is doing.
No, it’s probably not worth it. And as an American citizen, I would like you to know, that even we try to distance ourselves from that man as much as possible.
September 9th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I’m sorry you are having problems in your neck of the woods with regard to APEC meetings,etc.…
One simple question for you though.…..Why is this feeding to Planet Ubuntu? If I go to planet.ubuntu.com, I would really rather see news blogs about.…*ahem*.… UBUNTU and or related FOSS issues.
September 9th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
If a national leader’s assasination would cause a world wide stock market crash, then that is all the more reason to reduce the importance of that leader. You can defend against an assassination (at a significant cost, which seems to be greater than the 170 million they have spent on security alone for this APEC), but what if the same leader had a car accident, or a heart attack, or something else like that which you can’t really prevent.
I found that the different media spins on the chaser stunt were very interesting. Compare the big newspaper reports on what happened, and you see some slightly different stories (specifically around the area of how they eventually got caught)
September 9th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
Accorindg to
http://www.apec2007.org/apec.aspx?inc=footer/accessibility
they say they “have carefully considered the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in order to endeavour to meet the Government Online standards”.
Yes, carefully considered it, then discarded it. Looking through the validator.w3c service on just their front page was an excercise in pain.