APEC begins its activities this week in Sydney, with high security across the city and an international media centre equipped to facilitate reporters from around the world.

There will be a total media contingent of 1500 broadcasters, internet reporters and print journalists who will use purpose-built facilities at Darling Harbour to file stories about the forum for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and its 21 influential guests. Many side meetings of diplomats and bureaucrats will also take place at conference venues around the city.

Of those media covering the event, 1000 are foreign media and 500 are Australian.

Local media have also geared up for coverage of the event from inside the meeting and for coverage of protests, street closures and traffic disruption for the whole week. Sydneysiders will get a public holiday on Friday, the main day of the conference, to prevent total traffic chaos in the city when cavalcades of protective service vehicles shadow foreign dignitaries. Accredited media will also be bussed around the city in groups as part of the restrictions on movement associated with the conference.

And as the mainstream media go into hyper-drive over the upcoming APEC protests, Sydney high powered community station 2SER is seeking to balance what is says is likely to be “narrow and unreliable coverage” of the protesters’ point of view.

Are the protestors really just mindless troublemakers with violence and destruction on their minds? What are some of the more serious issues behind theprotests? What about the NGO’s calling on APEC to support basic labor standards in Asia? What about the Chinese pro-democracy activists? An ‘APEC Lock Down special on 2SER wil seek to understand what the protesters are planning to do and say at APEC.

2SER’s “APEC Lock Down” will be on air noon-6pm, Friday September 7. Six hours of live music and politics on FM 107.3 FM or at www.2ser.com.

Foreign currency watchers have also had an interesting time preparing for the conference, with one radio business commentator remarking to radioinfo:

“Have you ever noticed how our dollar goes sharply down whenever a bunch of foreigners, especially Americans, are planning to come here. It’s as though they want better value for their currency exchange so they force our dollar down while they change their money and travelers cheques. It happened before the Sydney Olympics, and it happened again last week with the Aussie dollar dropping sharply, then rising again back towards its previous levels, perhaps after everyone changed their money. A drop of ten cents randomly like that seems odd doesn’t it, given the strong fundamentals and recent rise of our dollar?”