APEC matters

Once a year, usually around November, some very unusual photos appear in the world media - They typically show a stage where a group of some of the world’s most powerful political leader’s stand all in a line all wearing the same outfit.

The outfits represent that national dress of the host nation. Therefore, in some years it is Indonesian batik, in some year’s a Chilean poncho and more recently, a traditional Vietnamese silk gown. Of course, we all know that when politicians appear in ponchos or other forms of exotic dress, that the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) leader’s meeting must be on. APEC, which comprises the world’s major economies located around the Pacific Ocean, is a relatively young international institution that promotes co-operation between nations on major economic issues be way of consensus and voluntary objectives (rather than being a highly prescriptive rules-based binding international institution).

APEC countries regularly meet to discuss regional co-operation on a whole gamut of cross-border issues from technical issues such as trade facilitation, e-commerce, transport and logistics, to people focused issues such as human resource development. Many APEC summits take place on these various issues but the leaders meeting draws all these developments together and naturally attracts the media spotlight. APEC is of particularly interest to Australia for three reasons.

Firstly, Australia had a key role to play in the origins of APEC. In fact, it was primarily Australia and The Republic of Korea who first built APEC’s foundations in 1989. According to then Prime Minister Bob Hawke, the APEC concept was launched in his Seoul speech in January 1989 and then followed up by the first ever APEC meeting in Canberra in November of that year. According to Hawke, regional co-operation through the APEC concept was formed: "in response to the global economic tensions resulting from the end of the cold war, and the real risk of trade wars and currency blocs forming. It was also important to highlight the fact that the Asia Pacific was the fastest-growing economic region in the global economy" Secondly, there’s no doubt about APEC’s weight in terms of trade and economic integration.