Last week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd initially seemed to have packed a great amount into seven 24-hour days. On Monday he attended Parliament, where he made an important point about climate change. During question time he noted that 40 per cent of Australia's (energy-related) CO2 emissions come from coal-fired power plants. He lectured the Opposition, insisting that this was exactly why carbon capture and storage was going to be crucial for Australia. This would be, he said, one of the best ways of bringing down our greenhouse gas emissions.
Rudd mentioned that two days earlier he'd been at Santos's Moomba plant (about 770km north of Adelaide). Here he'd seen the way the company was hoping to grab the carbon from the air and, somehow, stuff it back under the ground.
Of course Rudd admits that the technology to do this doesn't exist at the moment. It's all pie-in-the-sky, or hole-in-the-ground stuff at the moment, but this is where he's going to provide leadership. He'd be canvassing the idea ''extensively, with world leaders'' later in the week in New York at the meeting of the United Nations.
Now Rudd is right to focus on this issue because, if we're looking at potential causes of a future war, then climate change has got to be one of the most dangerous issues out there. If the danger is as imminent and potentially irreversible as most scientists predict, then we must find a scientific solution. Unfortunately, it appeared that Rudd didn't manage to achieve a breakthrough later in the week when he was in New York. In fact, the whole issue just seemed to just drop off his agenda by the time he arrived there, because by then climate change had become yesterday's news.
By Tuesday Rudd was moving over the face of the waters to Hawaii. Here he met Admiral Timothy Keating, who commands US forces in the Pacific. I'm sure the discussion the two men had was very interesting, although if it was so important perhaps Defence Force Chief Angus Houston should have been there as well. After all, Rudd shouldn't have to chat to a foreign officer even an ally to find out what's going on in our region. It would certainly look better all round if Rudd trusted Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon to do this sort of thing instead of inserting himself into detailed strategic discussions. It's well known Rudd is fascinated by strategic issues: that's why his recent speech to the RSL about the military build-up in the region carried such weight. But practised leaders learn the art of delegation. After all, they're supposedly sitting at the apex of government. Others are commissioned to provide options, responses, and follow things through with junior bureaucrats from other nations. Rudd apparently likes to be very hands-on.
For the next three days Rudd was in New York. By this time the financial crisis was engulfing the news pages, so in its turn this quickly became the focus of stories from the trip. In particular, we were told that when he spoke at the UN Rudd would urge a significant and broad-ranging reform of world regulatory systems in response to the looming financial disaster. And so he did. Rudd had begun the week by wholeheartedly embracing George W.Bush's plan to rescue the US financial system, but as the days passed he apparently understood why the Democrats objected to that plan. By now he recognised that something needed to be done to ''ensure those who run financial institutions have the right incentives to behave appropriately for the long term'', though he didn't specify how these might be introduced.
Unfortunately, all the major US players in this drama appeared to be closeted in Washington, D.C., at the time and no one sought Rudd's advice from New York. Even when he delivered the speech to the UN, the auditorium was, according to one report, ''near empty'', with barely a quarter of the seats full. Rudd was granted his own 15 minutes of fame on the world stage, but his speech didn't make the overseas papers.
Rudd's agenda was full, with a number of one-on-one meetings with other heads of government. Australia does have common interests with countries such as Portugal, Turkey, Britain, Afghanistan and Japan, and so it's good Rudd met these countries' leaders. But remember back to the beginning of the week and the plan for carbon sequestration?
Perhaps this is why we held a reception for the Alliance of Small Island States, because these countries will be the first to be submerged if the waters do rise. But the talk at that particular cocktail party (which includes ''small islands'' as diverse as Cyprus, Singapore and Papua New Guinea) was apparently much more focused on getting Australia a rotating seat on the UN Security Council. To do this Australia must beat Finland (population, just over five million) and Luxembourg (population under half a million).
We're spending millions of dollars to make sure we do.
We're becoming accustomed to hearing a great deal of noise from Rudd about the serious issues the world's facing whether it's the current economic crisis, the dangers of an arms race in our region or the need to see whether carbon sequestration could ever actually work.
But Rudd's approach seems to be simply to shine a spotlight on the problem and then move on. Fitzgibbon and Foreign Minister Stephen Smith aren't allowed to do anything. Everything is tightly controlled by Rudd.
By Saturday, Rudd was back in Melbourne to watch the AFL grand final. Happily, he realised there was no requirement for him to either umpire the game or take to the field. Instead he sat in the stands and allowed the players to race around by themselves. Perhaps surprisingly, it all seemed to go very well.
On the seventh day, Rudd rested.
Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.