Prime Minister Tony Abbott arrives in New York. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Despite his promise of smaller government and a smaller country, it has been Abbott's face-to-face relationship building and his deft leverage of Australia's Security Council presence, that has defined his administration's greatest heights – such as they are. This in turn has seen Australia increasingly inclined to lecture other countries, imploring them to fix taxation rules for multinationals, spend more on infrastructure, achieve higher growth rates, strengthen their banking systems, and improve their security. A measure of this new confidence derives from the calm competence of his chief diplomat, Julie Bishop, but Abbott's emergence as an active statesman is central. The grim reality is that deteriorating world affairs would have demanded close attention anyway, but the domestically-inclined Abbott has risen to international challenges without hesitation. It is on the home front conversely – think economy/budget/political management/industrial relations reform – that his government's performance has been modest or even poor.

Tony Abbott addresses the United Nations Security Council in New York. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen But one should be careful not to overstate the international prowess of Abbott nor blithely dismiss the potential for things to go awry. Climate policy and the war on terrorism - both borderless challenges of major significance and both the subject of special meetings in the Big Apple this week - provide a different perspective. Unfortunately, in these arenas, the costs of failure will become apparent long after this parliamentary cycle. Abbott meets US President Barack Obama. First, Abbott's climate anti-policy. The PM feels so vulnerable on this that he orchestrated his arrival in New York to occur after the UN Climate Change meeting of world leaders, missing it by just hours.

Some 120-plus leaders took seriously the invitation by Barack Obama and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to attend in person, but it was not a serious enough occasion for Abbott, who delegated it to Bishop. The long and short of it is that a country which had led the field on pricing carbon - ruthlessly rebranded as a tax by Abbott himself - skulked empty-handed into the back seats, figuratively speaking, hoping not to be noticed at the biggest global warming meeting since Copenhagen. Officially Australia seems intent on wishing this problem away, eschewing any serious attempt at a binding international agreement. No such reluctance on the streets of New York on Sunday, as it hosted a 400,000-strong march ahead of the high profile summit. The city of 9 million has also committed itself to an 80 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions on 2005 levels by 2050 through major technology investments. Even as he authorised missile strikes on Syria, Obama used his address to restore climate change to the top of the official concerns list: "For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week - terrorism, instability, inequality, disease -there's one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate.

"Nobody gets a pass … nobody can stand on the sidelines on these issues. We have to set aside the old divides. We have to raise our collective ambition, each of us doing what we can to confront this global challenge." It was as solid a rebuttal of Abbott's working principle that Australia should never again find itself out in front of the global community on climate policy, as one is likely to see in international diplomacy. However, on global terrorismAbbott is the very essence of a lead-by-example multi-lateralist, happy to be riding at the front of the US peloton. Here, the game seems to be to lay out the worst-case scenario by simultaneously talking up the domestic threat, seeding potentially panic-inducing stories about attacks on parliament house, tipping off television stations about top-secret counter-terrorism raids occurring the next morning, and basically getting right out in front on the challenge. Abbott's personal attendance at this part of the international talks in New York this week was deemed vital. Media manipulation aside, such policy activism may well be justified on the intelligence reports to which we, the people, have not been privy. But how to measure that? Certainly the number of people charged after last week's televised counter-terrorism raids has so far fallen short of the urgency created by 870-strong police presence and subsequent hyper-ventilating about imminent public beheadings and worse.

The Canberra cabbie is cynical about all of this, suspecting executive-level exaggeration which cannot be proved right now, but neither can it be disproved. All we have is the introduction of spectacular actions on our behalf, including in some cases a reversal of the burden of proof, and a massive security upgrade to parliament, all of which just happen to reinforce the sense of danger and therefore the need for those very measures. Little wonder that heightened national security and public safety fears benefit incumbent leaders providing solutions. There is a stunning contradiction here though. On the one hand we have the refusal to lead on global warming while on the other, a tendency to act precipitately on global terror - right up to and including pre-positioning of troops for involvement in another Middle East war. The mishandling of each risks massive long-running consequences which like a steep taxi fare, will simply not be open to negotiation at journey's end. Loading Mark Kenny is Fairfax Media's chief political correspondent.