Having a “Pre-COP” meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu is one of those initiatives that seemed a good idea at the time.

No doubt it still has resonance as part of Australia’s wider diplomacy in the Pacific, in the battle to limit China’s influence.

But when Anthony Albanese, still coming down from his New York high, steps onto his plane on Monday bound for Pre-COP, it could feel more chore than opportunity.

Even COP itself, in Turkey a few weeks later and also on Albanese’s itinerary, is not expected to break much ground.

Big issues have their high time, seizing public and media attention for brief or long periods.

When Labor announced in 2021 that it would bid to host COP (the United Nations’ annual climate meeting), climate change was still front and centre. But now – as we (with Pacific countries) are co-hosts with Turkey – global warming has slipped down the public’s agenda.

This doesn’t mean that objectively, climate change is any less important. It means other issues have supplanted it on the public’s and the media’s radar.

In terms of excitement and imagination, AI is the “big new thing”.

The appearance of OpenAI’s representative at a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, questioned about the recent breach of a government site by a rogue agent and the new technology’s risks and potential, will likely be of more interest to many Australians than what the PM is doing at Pre-COP. But neither will dominate their daily concerns.

In ordinary people’s day to day thinking, cost of living dominates, never more than this week when the Reserve Bank hiked rates for he fourth time this year, to the highest level since 2011.

Albanese might fend off questions about domestic politics while he’s away – as he tried to do when asked in New York about neglected Aboriginal children in........

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