A $600,000 water cannon to be used for crowd control on Sydney streets. Restrictions on movement and use of mobile phones. Hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on “security”.

Never is the difference between them and us more defined than when world leaders meet.

Planning for the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney on September 7-9 has been – we are told – meticulous, with security considerations to the fore.

Trouble-makers are not welcome. Protestors wishing to make use of their democratic rights have been warned off and will even be restricted from entering certain sectors of the city.

The leader of the free world may be making only a token visit – having changed his itinerary at the last moment and at great cost – and his wife not at all, but disrupted Sydneysiders are being told theirs is a great honour and to grin and bear disruptions and the price tag.

And please don’t express a contrary view. This is not a time for anyone to be commenting on human rights abuses in China or Japan’s slaughter of whales and dolphins, nor – heaven forbid – to mention the war.

This is a moment to marvel at regional cooperation – the US President’s inability to mesh his timetable with the rest of us aside – and to wonder at the economic benefits that will flow.

To quote foreign minister Alexander Downer on the 7.30 Report on Monday night: “These gatherings are not just about negotiating a declaration and having a collective meeting, they’re about the broader atmospherics of what you can achieve in the Asia-Pacific community.”

The really big issues, apparently – and again, according to the foreign minister – will only be discussed on the first day – the one Mr Bush will attend.

But this is still a very important occasion which, even though we will only ever get an insight into its workings via the most ambiguous of language proffered by our political masters, is well worth the disruption that will affect the lives of Sydney residents for at least two weeks.

Security demands much of us in these days of global terrorism. It requires that we willingly and unquestioningly accept whatever we are told.

We must accept, for a start, that Mr Downer’s “broader atmospherics” require the presence of more than 4000 soldiers, police – both state and federal – and private security guards to effectively lock down a city and to shut out its residents.

Places like the Opera House and international hotels will be no-go zones, and this Saturday construction will start on a 5km-long, 2.8m-high reinforced concrete fence, to separate the leaders from the rest of us.

NSW state transport minister John Watkins has told the people he serves to take a break from the city centre because it “won’t be the place to be” – and he’s probably right.

For a start, three central railway stations will close for the summit and the Opera House will be off limits from September 3.

All this and the stern instruction, also from deputy premier Watkins, that the APEC fireworks display is for guests only and Sydneysiders should not take their children to the harbour to catch a glimpse but watch it on television instead, should be accepted graciously as the price to be paid for such a great honour.

Sunshine Coast residents looking on from a distance could be excused a wry smile at the goings on.

We, after all, have some intimacy with the workings of important gatherings of world leaders and are awake to the overkill.

Take, for example, the recent APEC offshoot, Camp Treasurers at the Coolum Hyatt. Those informal discussions may well have required disruption to the order of neighbouring suburbs, a huge security detachment and closure of a national park before, during and after the treasurers’ actual presence in our midst.

But that was clearly not the view held by either some in that security detachment, or their superiors.

Why else would it be possible for a group of police to go on a drunken rampage at the tourist resort, while the neighbouring community was still in lock-down, and yet the police minister and commissioner of police deny that anything untoward occurred?

Can we expect the same in Sydney? Are highly disruptive, hugely expensive, so-called anti-terrorism measures little more than window dressing – theatre?

Again, we have the security forces themselves to answer those questions.

Remember, the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) at the Hyatt, the agents in the bushes, the helicopters overhead at night, the beam of their searchlights reflecting from our roofs and the security patrols on our beaches?

Coolum Holiday On Government Money (CHOGM) was the inscription chosen for the t-shirts some of those security forces now wear with the not so subtle smirk of an insider.

Maybe that explains the point of the silly shirts the visiting world leaders will don to mark their visit.