Mark Leftly: It should be a summit for growth but the G20 will be knocked off course
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Your support makes all the difference.Westminster Outlook The front pages of two of Australia’s biggest newspapers yesterday showed what this weekend’s G20 meeting of economic powers, accounting for 85 per cent of global GDP, should be worrying about – and what they are really worrying about.
The Australian claimed an exclusive in an interview with Sam Walsh, the chief executive of the Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto. The opera-loving sexagenarian said there was “no room for complacency”, urging G20 members, which include the UK, US, Russia and China, to remove barriers to growth at the summit in Brisbane.
There weren’t a lot of specifics, but Mr Walsh was happy that Australia’s year of the G20 presidency promoted adding 2 per cent to world growth over the next four years. Given that investment in infrastructure is towards the top of the weekend’s agenda, it is quite clear governments around the world see new roads, railways, bridges and schools as the way to create jobs in a world that is still so scarred by a credit crunch that turned into a financial crisis.
The G20 is often accused of being a talking shop – useful at times of crisis, like in London in 2009, when a $1.1trn plan to defeat recession was developed, but meaningless in more prosperous, calm years.
The second front page showed the difficulties that this summit will encounter in achieving any substantial economic change – how agenda items on tackling tax avoidance and boosting growth will more likely fuel speeches than distinct policy.
The Daily Telegraph, a Sydney newspaper not to be confused with one of our rivals, stuck pictures of a Russian ship, a hammer and sickle, and Vladimir Putin in military uniform on its splash. The headline read “Rash Putin”, referring to the Russian President’s hugely unsubtle show of naval muscle in sending four ships towards Australia on the eve of the summit.
David Cameron, Barack Obama and the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott have barely let up in their vociferous criticism of Mr Putin, even in the past week as the summit approached. Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, and the destabilisation of that buffer with parts of Europe, threatens to overshadow completely what should be the economic focus of the summit.
This particular G20 will be about political posturing; any economic developments are likely to prove minor and will certainly be forgotten as every frosty meeting between Mr Putin and a Western leader is considered to be of symbolic importance. Our political leaders are unlikely to be guilty of Mr Walsh’s feared complacency – rather, realpolitik will triumph over economics in a way not previously seen in the G20’s 15 years.
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