Briefly — for I am spending more time in airports this week than I should — I wanted to comment on the curious instance last week of the Group of 20 industrialised nations meeting in Pittsburgh.

Not that long ago, the G20 seemed like an irrelevant organisation, and Pittsburgh an equally unimportant city (though I know people who’d say it still is!). But even if last Friday’s announcement was made up of “unenforceable vague standards”, in the words of one US Senator, it’s remarkable because at least there are standards being drawn up. Merely five or ten years ago, it’d have been extraordinary to see twenty nations agree to even try to harmonise policy in this way. But thanks to its right-place-right-time luck in the last 12 months, the G20 has managed to earn some cred, and all eyes seem to be on it.

And thus, in comparison to things like the freak-show last week at the UN General Assembly, the G20’s future suddenly looks filled with promise.

Obama’s stated aim of showing how the country’s “rust belt” is being transformed worked to the extent that plenty of articles were published, and there seems to be a media consensus that something significant happened in Pittsburgh (a changing of the guard, as it were, between the G7/8 and the G20). These stories are all obviously a bit contrived — but I can’t help but feel that maybe they’re onto something.

• What I’m now hearing described as the “financial crisis of 08-09” is of course complicated and still evolving; it is clearly nonsense to point to any one event as the cause. And yet, this article (note the date, in the height of the dot-com boom) nevertheless seems breathtakingly prescient. (hat tip, Brad on Facebook.)
• Speaking of the financial crisis, it’s drawing out some rather interesting advertising plays. “Helping America emerge stronger”, hmmm?
• To wrap up the California budget discussion: shortly after that last post I went to San Diego (which was wicked cool!) … and was amused to see the local public transport agency already and very publicly complaining about how the state government cut their budget, even distributing flyers on the trams!
• Meanwhile back in WA, I am really not comfortable with all the mandatory sentencing noises being generated by the state (minority!) government. Do we really trust our politicians to determine prison sentences more than our judges?
• And to conclude on another financial-crisis note: awww, poor Babcock and Brown — I can picture their i-banking rivals snickering. Although it is unfortunate that (what’s left of) the once-mighty Alinta is being strewn aside as a result of their collapse …

Today I shall rant about an article I read in the Sydney Morning Herald.

Peter Hartcher reckons poor old Australia, strong, brave, dependable Australia, has inherited a new empire of failed states who need our paternalism.

I acknowledge the concerns of some about an ‘arc of instability’ to our north; although this isn’t the best term, and it’s a bit condescending to say to our neighbours “we expect you to fail”, it is true that there are lots of governments in trouble on the islands around us. But that’s a far cry from going all nationalist and painting Australia as the shining knight, coming to the rescue of the poor, uncivilised Pacific island barbarians who need to be saved from themselves. (And yet, Hartcher reckons he’s describing a “contrast to … traditional colonialism”!)

Better yet, he claims:

No one else is interested. Not the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations, which has spent 30 years perfecting the art of talk while cultivating abject uselessness in the science of action.

Having spent the last week reading and writing about ASEAN, I can see this for the ridiculous falsehood that it is. First up, repeating the decades-old claim that ASEAN is a useless talk-fest doesn’t help it to become true (as my thesis will argue … but that’s forthcoming). ASEAN has been glacially slow, sure, but it has also mitigated conflicts, promoted free trade, and is showing real signs of developing strong regional institutions. Second, ASEAN nations have a hard enough time dealing with poverty and political stability problems in their own region, so they tend to overlook countries close to them but outside their grasp — places like Bhutan and Nepal as well as the Solomons and PNG.

(That said, I do agree that ASEAN should be more outward-looking than it is; they’ve failed even to officially acknowledge the problems of Pacific island states.)

Hartcher’s article even implies that Australia can claim credit for leading the bail-out of Asian economies during the 1997 financial crisis (newsflash, mate: that belongs to the IMF, stubborn local ministries, and later the Chiang Mai Initiative).

The only redeeming grace is that towards the end, his article hits the nail on the head: it is indeed “a viable economy and effective governance” that are sorely lacking in Timor and the Solomons. Long-term planning is exactly what is needed. But pointing to Australia as a militaristic saviour (or scaremongering about Northeast Asia, as the end of his article does) is not the answer at all.

Also in today’s news: the US Supreme Court finally sees the obvious but our PM continues to show indifference to looking after the interests of Aussie citizens overseas, and Mari Alkatiri wangles his way out of testifying today for what seem to be selfish reasons, but by stalling I suspect he might also give Dili’s angry protestors a chance to calm down.