The enduring image of APEC will be the Saturday night footage of 21 heads of government in their colour-coded Drizabones, waving sheepishly with one hand while trying to conceal their unwanted Akubras with the other.

It was a picture fraught with embarrassment, and so it should have been. Not only did they look like a conga line of flashers caught emerging from a public toilet, but both separately and collectively they had achieved even less than their most severe critics had predicted. It is difficult to believe that anyone will ever take APEC seriously again.

Alexander Downer, of all people, got it right five months ago: when it comes to action on climate change, aspirational targets are not real targets at all; they are nothing more than political stunts. How then are we to describe the long-heralded Sydney Declaration, which failed even to set an aspirational target?

It merely said that this should be one of the goals of the next United Nations climate change meeting at Bali in December – a sort of aspiration to an aspiration. In the meantime, countries should aim to make equitable contributions with an emphasis on practical actions – sheer unadulterated waffle, which was precisely what the overwhelming majority of those present intended it to be.

The Asian countries in particular were never going to fall for the Australian-American idea of a separate forum outside the UN processes, along the lines of the now all-but-forgotten AP6 group initiated by George Bush a few months ago. For them, as for the Europeans, the serious negotiation will take place in Bali, where Australia and the United States, as non-ratifiers of Kyoto, will be admitted only as observers, not as full participants.

For all Howard’s posturing and grandstanding, the Sydney Declaration does not amount to a huff in a hurricane. And given that the Sydney Declaration was supposed to be the shining centrepiece of the event, the APEC meeting must be considered an abject failure.

The bilateral deals Howard came up with were all sealed and delivered long ago: the defence and nuclear power agreements with the US, the sale of natural gas to China and uranium to Russia had been settled at both a political and bureaucratic level, with only the formality of a signature required from the leaders.

The only positive was the fact that they did, at least, meet face to face and this might lead to more understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses and personal foibles in future. Such first hand contact is undoubtedly worthwhile; but is it worth $300 million? Given the outcomes, or the lack of them, even the profligate John Howard must have his doubts.

Certainly he received a series of ringing endorsements from Bush, but in the present circumstances these must be considered of dubious value. And in the overall diplomatic stakes he was comprehensively upstaged by Kevin Rudd and his ready excursions into Mandarin. Then, the week was supposed to showcase Australia and Sydney, but the absurdly overblown security blanket ensured none of the VIP visitors saw very much of either.

And of course, the security didn’t even work: The Chaser boys drove a horse and cart (well, at least a motorcade) through the $160 million ring of steel and were forced to give themselves up when no one could be found to stop them. A pair of drinkers in the foyer of the Intercontinental looked on in bemusement as Bush and his retinue walked past; they had presumably been misidentified as part of the gazillion-strong goon squads supplied by both sides.

Eventually the cops took out their frustrations on demonstrators after a peaceful and incident-free march had already finished in Hyde Park. Far from presenting Sydney as the friendly, open city overseas viewers might have remembered from the Olympic Games, APEC showed them an unwelcoming fortress reduced to a paranoid laughing stock.

Even the local media failed to respond to what Howard kept assuring them was the most significant gathering ever to take place on Australian soil, although admittedly he himself did not help by sending his deputy to welcome the most powerful man in the world to Sydney – he himself had a previous engagement at a footy award television show. At the start, the coverage of APEC was largely overwhelmed by concern about cancelled horse races and by the end it had been overtaken by yet another bout of feverish leadership speculation.

This came about after another bad opinion poll induced The Australian’s resident dominatrix Janet Albrechtsen to join Andrew Bolt and other rats in deserting her idol and benefactor: Howard, she announced, should now step down with dignity rather than face humiliating defeat.

This presumably meant that he should toss the leadership in a hospital pass to Peter Costello, although how this was supposed to help the conservative cause was not really explained. Presumably the analogy to be drawn was with Labor in 1983, when Bill Hayden as leader made way for Bob Hawke, who subsequently swept to victory.

However, seasoned political analysts might detect just the hint of a couple of differences between the two situations. The first is that in 1983 the polls showed Labor already on track for a win; in 2007 they show the coalition headed for a crushing defeat. The second is that in 1983 Hawke was unquestionably the most popular politician in the country; in 2007 Costello is arguably the least popular.

Desperate times may call for desperate measures, but this is just ridiculous. Truly, those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make mad.