The Cairns Group: a 20th anniversary back-slapping exercise?

The prospects are not good. Mr Howard has never been a committed multilateralist, preferring the old-style approach of face-to-face negotiations with individual countries rather than working towards wider goals. His refusal to have any real relationship with the European Union, treating with its individual members as if the grouping did not exist, is proof enough of that.

Mr Rudd decries what he describes as the “spaghetti bowl approach of individual free trade agreements” and predicts that data beginning to emerge from the existing set of FTAs will show they have not been worth the trouble. “Exporters are already coming to me worrying about things like country rules of origin,” he said. “The data is thin at the moment, but it does seem our trade imbalance with these countries is widening rather than narrowing.”

While the conservative side of politics may put his attitude down to multilateral idealism, he describes it as “in the great traditions of ALP pragmatism”.

“If you make a free trade agreement with an economy that is a lot bigger than yours, you end up with a set of rules which don’t advantage you,” he said. “The exclusion of sugar from the American FTA and what may well happen with the proposed Chinese FTA are cases in point.”

There is more at stake here than just trade. The failure of the multilateral trade negotiation framework could spill over into other areas where nations work together to achieve an acceptable consensus.

Already the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty is beginning to fray around the edges; Australia and the United States remain in a stand-off with the countries which have adopted the Kyoto Protocol on climate change; the Bush Administration wants to re-write the Geneva Convention on the humanitarian treatment of prisoners to suit itself.

At just the time when nations are embracing the economic realities of globalisation, many of the rules that govern their relationships are under threat. The law of the jungle is not an acceptable formula for international relationships in the 21st century.