APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) has arrived in Australia and the national costume is ridiculous as usual and the security is even more so. As Howard slips down in the polls it seems that he is determined to slide even further by locking down our biggest city just so that his best mate Bush can admire the sites peacefully without feeling Australian’s response to his unfavourable presence. As APEC approached it became questionable that is was in fact an APEC meeting that Howard had organised or whether it was just another opportunity for more military and trade commitments with America.

It seems somehow that Australia’s economy was not considered in the organisation of APEC, with a massive security budget of over $150 MILLION being spent, which basically involved shutting down our most prosperous city and literally fencing us out. And maybe this kind of security would be worthwhile, that is if it actually worked, but the boys from Chaser managed to drive a fake motorcade into the APEC restricted zone and if they hadn’t voluntarily stopped would have easily reached the hotel where Bush was staying. You are left asking, why did they even bother with security? This is a shameful waste of money; sadly the Governments response was that security should be tighter, somehow missing the point that increasing the restrictions on every day people only leads to more public discontent and furthers the security risk anyway.

Disappointingly once Howard and Bush got their new military agreements out of the way and APEC itself got underway it was more of the same, it seemed that the main topic was military matters and that "Economic Cooperation" was taking a back seat to a whole lot of agreements that have little to do with APEC at all. Russia made a billion dollar arms deal with Indonesia, at the same time Australia has decided to export uranium to Russia, which could really be used for anything and in light of an arms deal with Indonesia is actually quite scary.

Obviously it wasn’t all bad, at least climate change was an important topic, as it should be given that it is quite possibly the most important dilemma facing mankind today. The commitments that were made on this, while they were good progress, were nonetheless still a little disappointing. Howard committed $70 million to climate change, however this is less than Australia even spent on the security for APEC, surely climate change is more important that this? The "aspirational goals" that were agreed to, of 25% energy use reductions by 2030 were also a bit disappointing and do not really reflect the urgent need to address climate change. The term "aspirational goals" is also somewhat daunting...what exactly is an aspitational goal and how is such a goal different to a normal goal? In the dictionary an aspiration is a will to succeed and a goal is defined as an intention to achieve...so basically they are saying that they are going to try to intend to achieve a 25% reduction of energy use by 2030. Wow that sounds like quite a plan!

There were certainly plenty of other things discussed at APEC and undoubtedly numerous trade agreements were made, after all that’s what APEC is all about, but all of these things were overshadowed by new military and arms agreements and the lack of commitment to actually doing something about climate change. So, quite predictably, there was nothing very impressive achieved at APEC, nothing that is going to greatly benefit the world and it was really just another missed opportunity for our World Leaders to actually do something good and a massive waste of money on Australia’s part.

J. Spooner

Welcome all to The Inevitable's new web site and the first article in our thoughts section. The Inevitable is a band that plays decent rock music with a social conscience, and hence felt it was necessary to have a "thoughts" page on the web site, in order to comment on current affairs, world issues and express ideas.

Throughout history humans have envisaged many forms of their utopia, the hands-free, care-free comfortable lifestyle, in a world without disease, poverty, war and discrimination. Instead of achieving this ideal, the human race has manifested more inconvenience for themselves and still continue to hate, kill and destroy their environment, while justifying these actions with politics, religion, superstition and fear.

One could be fatalistic about the nature of the human race and say that we are what we are, and will always be so... But I hold the belief that people are capable of choosing a path towards a better world - some have! But artists, poets, peacemakers, activists, philosophers and scientists who try to hold us to account for our actions and mistakes, are too often ignored in the favour of rampant consumerism and greed.

As the slogan of our site says: "Change is the Inevitable, nothing stays the same forever...", its time the global community made some changes to its regular routine. My belief is that music makes the world a better place and that in addition to a good tune, a song should have a message of significance, so we don't play pop music, we play good music. The Inevitable has arrived, get ready for the ride!

C. Spooner