tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/g20-brisbane-9429/articlesG20 Brisbane – The Conversation2019-08-08T20:04:44Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1211212019-08-08T20:04:44Z2019-08-08T20:04:44ZFriday essay: revisiting the Dark Man – a journey into Queensland’s shadow country<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287249/original/file-20190807-144847-fus5h1.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The view from the back verandah of the house where the city met the bush.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is an edited extracted of an essay in <a href="https://griffithreview.com/editions/crimes-and-punishments/">Griffith Review 65: Crimes and Punishments</a>, edited by Ashley Hay.</em></p>
<p>One recent Saturday morning, I once again drove my children to the street in Brisbane’s west where I grew up as a boy.</p>
<p>They had been on this journey too many times to remember: the pleasant drive through The Gap in the Taylor Range, past the old jam factory and the golf course, left into Payne Road and then sharp left into the dogleg that is Bernarra Street.
Here, in the early 1960s on the frontier of suburban Brisbane, my parents built a small rectangular house on a sloped block.</p>
<p>“We’re seeing the house again?” remarked my daughter, ten. I had lived in this street until I was 12. I had been her age in this strip of red-brick and weatherboard houses, part of an exciting new “estate” where the edge of the city met the bush and boulders of western Brisbane. </p>
<p>On this day, as we cruised into Bernarra Street, we approached the house and noticed, for the first time since my parents had sold it in 1974, that it was for sale again.</p>
<p>There, on the footpath where I had kicked thousands of winning goals for my rugby team, slipped in the wet and lacerated my cheek on the corner of a brick wall, was a real estate sandwich board that declared “Open House”.</p>
<p>Why did I keep returning here, to this stamp of land? I had lived in some of the great capital cities of the world, and yet these few hundred metres of street in Brisbane, a spine of outdated homes, a clutch of footpath jacarandas and poincianas, had become my touchstone.</p>
<p>I had some idea. Everything had started here, in the light of the house upstairs and the shadows of downstairs, with its concrete pillars and exposed timber and raw earth.</p>
<p>Here, the questions were posed. And I only understood, in that moment outside the old house, with my children, bored and rolling their eyes in the back seat of the car, that I had spent my life trying to answer those questions.</p>
<p>“I’m going in,” I told the kids. “I’ll be five minutes. Stay in the car.” “Dad.”
“Five minutes, that’s all.”</p>
<p>It’s hard now to remember what I felt walking up and into the house for the first time in almost 45 years because so many emotions were at play. Here, my view of the world was formed. Here, family secrets I didn’t know existed at the time were as solid and deeply buried as the giant boulders of granite on which the house sat. This molten mass had pushed up 200 million years earlier, and then my family came along and constructed a faux-colonial homestead on top.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287244/original/file-20190807-144851-cllrzc.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Like pushing back time…</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Going up those stairs and through the front door was, for me, like pushing back time, through decades, thrashing and flailing through the accreted detritus of experience, of life, to the beginning of my existence.</p>
<p>But it was just a house on this hot and glary Saturday, with a real-estate agent in attendance, and some perambulating couples quietly assessing whether this might be where they would settle and raise their own children.</p>
<p>I wandered through the small lounge and dining room, then down the central hall. I peered into what had been my bedroom, an impossibly small space that overlooked the backyard, and had flashbacks so intense I felt dizzy and needed to retreat.</p>
<p>Here, I had met and endured the Dark Man. He was a character that lived in my closet, and sometimes at night he would step into the room. He was tall and wore a long, black coat and a black fedora and he had an infinite, featureless black face. He would stand and stare at me and then disappear into the closet again.</p>
<p>I remembered trying to scream whenever I saw the Dark Man, but no sound issued from my child’s mouth.</p>
<p>I went downstairs again and drifted into the garage area under the house.
I had spent countless hours here in the shadows, building a replica of Brisbane in the dirt beneath the floorboards, complete with roads and suburbs and the Brisbane City Hall clocktower, fashioned from a narrow rectangular offcut of wood.</p>
<p>Down in these cool shadows, I could hear my parents and my twin sister shifting about the house above, or the clang of a piece of dropped cutlery, or the flush of the toilet. Sometimes, in the early evening, I could smell from the kitchen the bilious odour of lamb’s fry or boiled chicken or cabbage.</p>
<p>I was always comfortable in this dark space, with my own company. I could play undisturbed for hours, and to be called to dinner was to be to be pulled out of a very real world of my own making. Upstairs, in the light, it comforted me to know that directly below my feet was this block of shadow that belonged to me, and where anything might happen.</p>
<p>On the day of the Open House, I noticed some words written in chalk on one of the house’s wooden supporting beams – “Condon job” – perhaps scrawled there by timber merchants before they loaded it onto a truck and drove it out to the blank concrete slab of our future house in Bernarra Street.</p>
<p>Condon job.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287243/original/file-20190807-144843-17ykn82.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The wooden beam.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That the white cursive had survived for over a half a century was surprising enough. But seeing it now, me twice as old as my father was when we lived in this house, it seemed it could be a message for me that had been sent into the future. Then again, this house had always been my romantic Brigadoon and forever opened that little drawer of hyperbole in me.</p>
<p>I left the cool of the garage and walked down towards my car.</p>
<p>For almost a decade I had worked on the story of Queensland police and political corruption from the 1940s through to the 1990s. I have trawled through Brisbane’s underworld, conducted hundreds of interviews, spent three years of my life interrogating corrupt former Queensland Police Commissioner Terry Lewis, studied thousands of documents, visited the sites of former brothels and illegal gambling joints, had beers with murderers and lattes with old gangsters.</p>
<p>What had begun as a reflex, a seemingly banal decision influenced by curiosity, had swallowed me whole. As the months passed, then years, the exit doors became less frequent, and one phone call led to another email led to another interview led to another discovered document, clue, theory, possibility and conspiracy to the point where it felt as if I had created a map that nobody had ever seen before. It was as though I’d fallen through its co-ordinates and highways and byways and rivers and rivulets and streets and unsealed roads to become trapped on the other side, unable to penetrate a mesh of my own making.</p>
<p>Perhaps this had been the “Condon job” I’d been destined to acquit, the prophecy written in white chalk in the dank undercroft of a featureless suburban house.
But as I researched this story over the months, and then years, I was both surprised – and wearily not – that members of my own family had cameos in this narrative, and that I too had been in and around this drama since I was a boy.</p>
<p>Like the house in Bernarra Street, my family history was all light and windows upstairs with a nice view from the veranda, but shadowy and sometimes pitch black down below.</p>
<p>We become writers, I think, because we intuit from a very young age that the picture we see around us is not quite right. That windows stick and doors don’t close smoothly because everything is slightly off balance.</p>
<p>Early on we are riddled with questions that we can’t answer. Then we can’t shake the questions.</p>
<p>We look for that fissure in the wall.</p>
<p>With the story of Queensland crime and corruption, I had accidentally found my fissure.</p>
<p>Then pushed through to the other side.</p>
<h2>Behind the cacti</h2>
<p>As a child in the 1960s I was free range, exploring my immediate neighbourhood by foot or by bicycle. I knew every square centimetre of my immediate landscape, every tree and ant nest, every gutter and drain. Every car and motorcycle, adult and child.</p>
<p>Around 1968, in Barkala Street, immediately parallel to ours, I was fascinated by one particular vehicle that was often parked out the front of a small house. I found the house curious because its garden was bulging almost exclusively with cacti. The garden beds were like giant fists of swords and daggers, protecting the house’s inhabitants.</p>
<p>It was an ugly and violent and dangerous-looking place.</p>
<p>And then there was the car, an American-style limousine with long, smooth lines that looked as out of place as the garden.</p>
<p>Invariably, waiting beside the car was a man in a uniform and formal cap. I assumed he was the driver of the limousine. I saw the man and the car many times, walked past them and looped my Dragster bicycle in their orbit.</p>
<p>Only decades later, researching the true crime books, did I realise that the man who lived behind the wall of cactus was Queensland Police Commissioner (1958–69) Frank Bischof, father and perfector of the corrupt system known as “The Joke”, a network of graft that would ultimately infect almost every branch of the state’s government, judicial system, public service and community in general for decades.
Bischof was vile and self-interested. He was a thug, a bully, a braggart and a world-class liar.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286205/original/file-20190730-186797-1om9i4s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=610&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Police Commissioner Frank Bischof discusses the upcoming police ball with three debutantes from the Main Roads Department in 1963.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the end, the little boy from Bernarra Street, happy-go-lucky on his bicycle, would expose Bischof as a paedophile. </p>
<p>Several of his victims approached me following the publication of the first volume of the Lewis trilogy – Three Crooked Kings (UQP, 2013) – and detailed their abuse at Bischof’s hands; some of those stories were published in the second volume, Jacks and Jokers (UQP, 2014), and in my later books Little Fish Are Sweet (UQP, 2016) and The Night Dragon (UQP, 2019).</p>
<h2>Eerie connections</h2>
<p>There were other gossamer threads between branches of my family tree and this corruption saga.</p>
<p>In the late 1930s, one particular relation of mine, tall and fit with his hair oiled back, was sent to the Westbrook Farm Home for Boys outside Toowoomba, west of Brisbane. Westbrook was a byword for hell. Here, troubled boys were, in theory, to be shown the path to the straight and narrow. Instead, they were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/local/photos/2015/04/15/4216766.htm">abused, sexually assaulted</a>, in some instances tortured by officials.</p>
<p>Westbrook was a criminal primary school where boys began learning the skills needed for a life of crime. It was where they established friendships that, on the outside, were maintained and morphed into criminal associations. Often, the Westbrook boys would end up together in “high school” – Boggo Road Gaol in Brisbane.</p>
<p>My relative was released from Westbrook when he was 18, in the late 1930s, and immediately embarked on a life of petty crime. He was arrested and incarcerated on multiple occasions. There is little doubt he would have been known to then Detective Frank Bischof, the big wheel down at the Brisbane Criminal Investigation Branch, who used the wartime black market to hone his own skills in extortion and blackmail, used to great effect when he later became police commissioner.</p>
<p>In the late 1940s, my relative was arrested, with another man, on a charge of attempted rape. At around 9pm one evening, he and his friend attacked a young woman and tried to molest her after she’d gotten off a tram.</p>
<p>When he was found guilty and sentenced to seven years’ hard labour, members of my family present in court that day caused such a ruckus – stomping, screaming, crying and shouting obscenities – that the story made national news.</p>
<p>Delving into Brisbane’s underworld, I discovered some eerie connections between this relative and myself.</p>
<p>In the early 1950s, on release from prison, he lived with his parents in the suburb of Red Hill before marrying a young woman, the sister of a friend he made in Boggo Road.</p>
<p>She would die of a mysterious “bowel obstruction” less than a year after their marriage, but not before they lived in a house on Paddington’s Latrobe Terrace in the city’s inner west. That house, I discovered, was less than 400 metres from the house where I raised my own children.</p>
<p>In the 1960s, according to family members, this relative also did “business” in the old Paddington Hotel nearby. That pub, albeit its more respectable modern incarnation, was my local.</p>
<p>Early that same decade, just as my family was settling into Bernarra Street, a young Terence Murray Lewis was raising his own family in Ellena Street in the suburb formerly known as Rosalie but later subsumed by Paddington. (Lewis would be elevated to Commissioner of Police in 1976, and would be jailed for official corruption in the 1990s.)</p>
<p>The Lewis home was two houses up from the local Baptist church. My grandfather George Baker, a motorcycle fanatic, and my grandmother Freda lived one street away from the Lewises in Beck Street. My grandfather helped build that Baptist church.
In the little village of Rosalie, with its butcher and barber and picture theatre, there is no doubt the Bakers crossed paths with the young policeman, Lewis, and his family. Both George and Terry were obsessed with motorcycles.</p>
<p>Also in the early 1960s, Bischof promoted Lewis to head of the new Juvenile Aid Bureau. Lewis’s job was to crack down on youth truancy and crime. Curiously, and to the puzzlement of other police, the bureau’s office was established immediately next to the office of the police commissioner.</p>
<p>They called the bureau staff “the bum smackers”, and the job necessitated almost constant contact between Lewis and Brisbane schools, their principals and their errant students.</p>
<p>On a Saturday morning, even Bischof lent a hand. He opened the doors of his office to concerned parents who could bring their naughty children in to be counselled by Uncle Frank. In Jacks and Jokers, I wondered if the “Saturday clinic” was a ruse to give Bischof unfettered access to children: after its publication, many people would tell me this was so.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=838&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286206/original/file-20190730-186801-ej9eam.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1053&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frank Bischof in 1962.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Lewis, a compulsive diarist, kept scrupulous notes on his work with the bureau. Dates, times, the names of schools and children, court cases and punishments filled his police diaries.</p>
<p>Decades later, preparing to write the story of Lewis’s life, he allowed me to read his bureau diaries. They were tremendously dull, and yielded little of importance to the story – until I found the names of some of my relatives. These were the children of the attempted rapist. They came to the attention of the bum smackers because they were discovered wandering the streets of Brisbane, wagging school, getting into trouble.</p>
<p>To see their names caught in the net of Lewis’s diary was jolting. Here was another generation of one side of my family emerging in the narrative threads of this story. Here was another point of intersection, where the upstairs floorboards met the shadows under the house.</p>
<p>My relative, he of Westbrook and the sexual assault and the “business” in the Paddo pub – was he the Dark Man in the cupboard at the end of my bed? </p>
<p>I remembered him as impossibly tall, with a handshake that could crush small bones. He was never impolite or aggressive towards me, on the few occasions I saw him. But I did get a glimpse into his family’s world through one of the children he had with his second wife who, when I was about ten, committed a foul and unspeakable act in front of me under the old Queenslander they rented, leaving me shocked and disturbed. Perhaps I was too innocent.</p>
<p>But I have never forgotten that moment, the brief opening and closing of a portal into another world – one most of us are sheltered from, one that speaks to a type of human behaviour guided by no rules or consequences.</p>
<p>I would come across this portal again and again through researching and writing the crime histories, and what I saw and heard I recognised instantly from that brief moment under the Queenslander.</p>
<h2>A dream of death</h2>
<p>In early 2010, courtesy of an introduction by a friend, I went to visit Terence Murray Lewis, then 82, in Brisbane’s suburban inner north. I had been told Lewis was ready to write his “story”, and that he needed some help. I instinctively knew that if I accepted this project, contingent on Lewis’s approval, it would take up several years of my life. I am now approaching my tenth year.</p>
<p>I have never kept diaries, but in the case of Lewis I decided to take down some notes after our meetings that would, in the end, result in three years of interviews.
We met for the first time at 9 am on 1 February 2010. I wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He is sharp and has a cunning air about him. He seems to quickly but expertly self-edit as he speaks. His dialogue is largely emotionless, except when it comes to the miscarriage of justice against him. A couple of times he slips out of character and there is an anger there, a temper beyond the façade, then he pulls it back in. It is the working-class scrapper, self-educated, that peers out from behind the former knight of the realm.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/286207/original/file-20190730-186841-10squi3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Terence Lewis.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The book about Lewis’s life became two books, then a trilogy. It kept going with a fourth volume and a fifth. With the publication of each volume, hundreds of people came forward, volunteering information, personal recollections and documents, exponentially expanding the project, filling in gaps in the mosaic and spawning possibilities for other standalone books. A dozen more are waiting to be written. Whether they will be written by me, I can’t say.</p>
<p>At the time the second volume of the trilogy was published, Lewis severed ties with me and demanded the return of his many papers and documents. The project had not been to his liking, and I had not published the hagiography he had hoped for. I have not heard a single word from him since.</p>
<p>My Lewis diary ends on 11 May 2015, four years and three months after we first met.
“I dream of the death of Lewis,” I wrote. (Lewis, 91, lives in Brisbane.)</p>
<blockquote>
<p>He’s driving what seems like an old Morris on a highway. He’s wearing a tweed sports coat and a pork pie hat.</p>
<p>I’m both in the car with him when it collides with something. And I’m in a separate car and I see the collision. There is what looks like a sweep
ing wave of liquid clay.</p>
<p>Lewis then turns into a black wolf, the wolf disappearing around the corner of a building. When I take a look, I see that he has turned into a black fox.
I recover a sheaf of Lewis’ diaries with his familiar handwriting and words highlighted and underlined.</p>
<p>There is a place Lewis has been trying to get to. I get a glimpse of it. A house. Hedges.</p>
<p>A woman. Lewis is now a middle-aged man. He’s wearing a singlet. He’s looking for friends. A green light traces across the sky.</p>
<p>I get a sense he’s truly himself in this place. That it’s the real man at last.
There are shadows.</p>
<p>Of course there are shadows. There have always been shadows. I fell into one as a child and I’ve been trying to work my way out of it ever since.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Hideous tales</h2>
<p>It is a peculiar place, this shadow country. It can be strangely intoxicating. After a few years in it you begin to learn to find your way around. Over time you become harder to shock. You get to a point where you think you understand this place, only to discover that there’s a darker shadow behind it, and another behind that.</p>
<p>There have been some predictable and some unforeseen personal side effects as a result of working on a project of this magnitude, and one that has involved immersion in stories of murder, child sexual abuse, violence, betrayal and every other regrettable feature of human nature.</p>
<p>I have been told tales that I truly wish I hadn’t heard. Those hideous details can never be unheard.</p>
<p>But one of the worst side effects has been this.</p>
<p>For much of my life after we left that little house in Bernarra Street, I never again woke in the middle of the night to see the Dark Man, with his black fedora and coat and infinite face, at the end of the bed.</p>
<p>I left him behind in that room.</p>
<p>But now, after almost ten years of working in the shadow country, I have not just seen him again. I see him everywhere.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121121/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew Condon does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When Matthew Condon began writing about corruption in Queensland he discovered that members of his own family had cameos in the narrative.Matthew Condon, Associate Professor, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/420512015-05-20T05:35:50Z2015-05-20T05:35:50ZKoalas, platypuses and pandas and the power of soft diplomacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82359/original/image-20150520-17690-1qrz6k6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">One of four koalas on loan to Singapore Zoo, where they were unveiled to the public on Wednesday May 20.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Qantas Airways</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Four female koalas have just made their debut in front of an adoring public at Singapore Zoo – the latest in a long line of animals used for diplomatic purposes.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82345/original/image-20150520-24994-hk0xts.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Idalia, one of four koalas now in Singapore.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://wrscomsg.wordpress.com/2015/04/16/koalas-arrive-in-singapore-zoo/">Wildlife Reserves Singapore</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The koalas are on loan from Australia to mark the 50th anniversary of <a href="https://www.singapore50.sg/SG50/About">Singapore’s sovereignty</a>, as well as 50 years of diplomatic relations with Australia. </p>
<p>As Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop’s <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2015/jb_mr_150409.aspx">media release</a> says, the koalas’ visit will “further build on our long-standing constructive relationship”. The four koalas will stay in Singapore for six months for now, but the gift will be made permanent once Singapore Zoo can support a koala colony.</p>
<p>The involvement of iconic animals in international diplomacy has <a href="http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?sid=57d7e1a9-6a24-43a0-a779-4bdf253614b0%40sessionmgr112&vid=0&hid=115&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=hlh&AN=43577808">a long history</a>. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"600873995567820801"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"600890650729574400"}"></div></p>
<p>Arguably, the best known of the world’s animal ambassadors has been the giant panda. Between the 1950s and 1980s, China presented two dozen pandas to countries with which it wished to improve its relations. </p>
<p>Other pandas were loaned, such as Xiao Xiao and Fei Fei, exhibited at <a href="http://www.giantpandazoo.com/TarongaZoo.html">Taronga Zoo</a>, Sydney, and Melbourne Zoo to mark Australia’s Bicentenary in 1988. </p>
<p>While the practice of giving pandas permanently to other countries has now stopped, “panda diplomacy” continues with the Chinese government lending pandas, including the pair Wang Wang and Funi <a href="http://www.adelaidezoo.com.au/animals/giant-panda/">at Adelaide Zoo</a>. </p>
<h2>The tragic tale of Winston the platypus</h2>
<p>Australia’s diplomatic deployment of native animals to other countries became more formalised during World War II.</p>
<p>The platypus’s high popular appeal and scientific interest meant that it was a highly valued diplomatic gift. </p>
<p>Australia’s first platypus diplomat left Melbourne in 1943, sailing on the MV Phillip to England even as World War II raged in Europe. </p>
<p>He was named Winston in honour of the British prime minister, who had expressed an interest in acquiring the animal to H.V. Evatt, minister for external affairs and attorney-general at the time. </p>
<p>Tragically, Winston <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848611000768">the platypus died</a> only days before landing in Liverpool. Churchill wrote to Evatt that he was: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>grieved to have to tell you that the platypus you kindly sent me died on the last few days of its journey to England. Its loss is a great disappointment to me. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Churchill would have to make do with a <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848611000768">stuffed platypus</a> that had been previously sent to him by Evatt, which he apparently displayed proudly on the prime ministerial desk.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=357&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82356/original/image-20150520-17707-1sy41u4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=448&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Official correspondence about the sad fate of Winston the platypus.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369848611000768">From Natalie Lawrence's paper, The Prime Minister and the platypus: A paradox goes to war, doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2011.09.001</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Bound for America</h2>
<p>A few years later, three more platypus envoys left Australia, this time bound for the United States, arriving in New York on April 25 1947.</p>
<p>They were a gift from the Australian government to the American people in recognition of American wartime service to Australia – a “gesture of closeness and goodwill”, declared Australia’s ambassador to the United States, Norman Makin. </p>
<p>Housed <a href="http://gothamist.com/2010/07/19/flashback_6.php#photo-1">at the Bronx Zoo</a>, the cosmopolitan monotremes attracted more than 4000 visitors a day in the months following their arrival.</p>
<p>With the Australian flag flying over their enclosure, considerable positive press were generated about Australia, including a front-page feature in The New York Times. </p>
<p>But difficulties with husbandry and a desire to have tourists come to Australia to see our native animals make it unlikely that more platypus will leave Australia in the near future. Instead, the diplomatic burden has shifted to an animal that is less of an oddity and trades more on cute appeal: the koala. </p>
<h2>Koala diplomacy</h2>
<p>Back in 1983, the then federal tourism minister, John Brown, did his best to steer Australia’s overseas image away from the koala, declaring (in a speech reported on the <a href="https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1300&dat=19830429&id=rmYpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=tJQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6508,6000327&hl=en">front page of The Age</a>) that they were “rotten little things” and tourists would discover:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>it’s flea-ridden, it piddles on you, it stinks and it scratches.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But two generations later, Brown’s opinion has largely been forgotten. Koala diplomacy has never been bigger.</p>
<p>This was easy to see last November at <a href="http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/about-council/governance-strategy/economic-development/brisbanes-2014-g20-leaders-summit">the G20 Summit in Brisbane</a>, when grinning world leaders posed one by one holding an obliging koala. </p>
<p>According to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-30075241">the BBC</a>, the summit’s “most memorable images” were of the G20 leaders “cuddling up to koalas”. </p>
<p>No doubt our koalas, Paddle, Pelita, Chan and Idalia, will generate at least as much, if not more, interest in Singapore as pandas have created in Australia or platypuses did in the United States. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=329&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/82341/original/image-20150520-24999-13zsrb3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://zoo.com.sg/koala-mania/?gclid=CIey6Lawz8UCFcIIvAodTqIAiw">Singapore Zoo</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="http://www.zoo.com.sg/koala-mania/">“koala mania”</a> takes hold in Singapore, we can reflect on the capacity of iconic, charismatic animals to communicate messages of goodwill across barriers of language and culture.</p>
<p>As John Brown suggested back in 1983, using native animals to promote Australia may risk selling short a dynamic, multicultural, resource-rich nation. </p>
<p>But our unique platypus, koalas and kangaroos do allow Australians to avoid harder decisions about how to portray ourselves to the world.</p>
<p>Pictures of cuddly animals are an effective way to market ourselves to the world as a peculiar but attractive “land down under”. They provide powerful images that nothing else – from a pile of iron ore, to live sheep on a ship, or a naval patrol vessel – can match.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42051/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nancy Cushing received funding from State Library of NSW in 2013 - 14. She is affiliated with the Australian Historical Association and the History Council of NSW.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kevin Markwell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Four female koalas have just made their debut in front of an adoring public at Singapore Zoo – the latest in a long line of animals used for diplomatic purposes, going back to Winston the platypus.Kevin Markwell, Associate Professor in tourism studies, Southern Cross UniversityNancy Cushing, Senior Lecturer in Australian History, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/384182015-03-09T18:50:53Z2015-03-09T18:50:53ZRoads to ruin: the pitfalls of the G20’s infrastructure bonanza<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74154/original/image-20150309-13573-1dsgz4t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C3%2C661%2C493&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A ranger looks at the skull of an elephant killed by poachers - a frequent side-effect of development projects that open up remote forests to human access.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ralph Buij</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the past decade, two-thirds of the world’s forest elephants – which live only in Africa’s equatorial rainforests – have been <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/mar/05/two-thirds-forest-elephants-killed">slaughtered by poachers</a> for their ivory tusks.</p>
<p>Why? One reason is that poachers are now armed with far more lethal technologies than they once had. Instead of arrows and spears, they now have powerful rifles and cable snares.</p>
<p>But an even bigger reason is that, since the year 2000, <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5830/1451">more than 50,000 kilometres of roads have been bulldozed into the Congo Basin</a>, mostly by industrial loggers, opening up the region to waves of commercial and subsistence hunters. The elephants simply have nowhere left to hide.</p>
<p>This scene of ecological invasion is being repeated over and over, all around the world. The last remnants of nature are in retreat, put to flight by roads and other human infrastructure.</p>
<h2>Bulldozing nature</h2>
<p>In the Amazon and lower Andes, for instance, plans are afoot to build <a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2012/0418-amazon_mega-dams.html">more than 150 new hydroelectric dams</a>, each of which will require networks of roads for dam and power-line construction. The 12 dams planned for the Tapajós River, a major tributary of the Amazon, will cause an estimated <a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2014/0915-tapajos-dam-deforestation.html">1 million hectares of extra deforestation</a> by 2032.</p>
<p>The Amazon also has almost <a href="http://news.mongabay.com/2012/1207-raisg-amazon-mining-boom.html">53,000 active mining leases</a>, covering some 20% of the basin. Building roads to develop these leases opens a <a href="http://e360.yale.edu/feature/as_roads_spread_in_tropical_rain_forests_environmental_toll_grows/2485">Pandora’s Box of problems</a>, such as illegal deforestation and fires, poaching, illegal gold mining and rampant land speculation.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74047/original/image-20150306-3289-qmas75.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In the Amazon, 95% of all deforestation occurs within 5 km of a road.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Google Earth</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Mining inroads</h2>
<p>If you want to see the wilds of Africa, don’t wait. Go today, because Africa is being transformed by a feeding frenzy of foreign mining investments. China alone is pouring <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12076/pdf">more than US$100 billion (A$130 billion) per year into mining projects on the continent</a>, with India, Brazil, Canada and Australia not far behind.</p>
<p>All this mining is leading to an avalanche of new African roads and development projects. My research colleagues and I are currently trying to assess the environmental damage that will arise from <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211912413000357">29 massive “development corridors”</a> that will criss-cross Sub-Saharan Africa, opening up many wild and semi-wild areas to human pressures.</p>
<p>In northern Sumatra, Indonesia, a 400 km road network called <a href="http://blog.cifor.org/27018/leuser-ecosystem-aceh-spatial-plan-ladia-galaska-road?utm_source=CIFOR+Website&utm_medium=Slide+show+bar&utm_campaign=Forests+News#.VPZQufmUc0E">Ladia Galaska</a> is about to slice into the last place on Earth where orangutans, tigers, elephants and rhinos still co-exist.</p>
<p>Even Australia isn’t immune from the global tsunami of infrastructure expansion. As part of the <a href="https://northernaustralia.dpmc.gov.au">Developing Northern Australia</a> push, the federal and several state governments are considering vast new investments in roads, hydroelectric projects, and agricultural intensification. </p>
<p>All this is happening at a time when we’re seeing <a href="https://euanritchie.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/stemming-the-tide-progress-towards-resolving-the-causes-of-decline-and-implementing-management-responses-for-the-disappearing-mammal-fauna-of-northern-australia.pdf">dramatic and widespread population declines</a> of many wildlife species in northern Australia.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=427&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74048/original/image-20150306-3295-9ajiry.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=537&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The northern quoll, a native marsupial related to the Tasmanian Devil, has suffered massive population declines in northern Australia.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(c) Mark Ziembicki</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The G20’s megalomania</h2>
<p>If the current situation seems scary, just wait. At the recent <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/g20-brisbane">G20 summit in Australia</a>, the 20 largest economies on the planet pledged to pour <a href="http://us.boell.org/sites/default/files/alexander_multi-polar_world_order_1.pdf">between US$60 trillion and US$70 trillion into new infrastructure</a> over the next 15 years. To put that into perspective, the estimated value of all existing infrastructure on Earth is <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21599394-world-needs-more-infrastructure-how-will-it-pay-it-long-and-winding">around US$56 trillion</a>. </p>
<p>The G20’s pledge would be the largest financial transaction in human history. Unless these projects are managed carefully, their ecological consequences could be almost unthinkable. </p>
<p>Australia is right at the heart of this effort. The G20 immediately committed funds to set up a new <a href="http://www.trade.nsw.gov.au/invest-in-nsw/news-and-events/news/g20-leaders-establish-sydney-as-global-infrastructure-hub">Global Infrastructure Hub</a> in Sydney, which aims to gather some US$2 trillion in short-term support for new infrastructure in the Asia-Pacific region.</p>
<h2>Nine steps to more sustainable infrastructure</h2>
<p>It’s for these reasons that my colleagues and I have written <a href="http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2815%2900219-5">nine recommendations</a> for reducing the global impacts of infrastructure developments, published in the latest edition of the journal Current Biology. This follows on from another study I led, to devise <a href="https://theconversation.com/global-roadmap-shows-where-to-put-roads-without-costing-the-earth-30815">“A global strategy for road building”</a>.</p>
<p>If taken seriously, we believe these initiatives could help to make roads, dams, mines, and energy projects more sustainable. Our focus is on the financial institutions, corporations, governments, donors and lenders who are building and promoting these projects.</p>
<p><strong>1.</strong> Work to keep intact wilderness areas road-free, according to the maxim “<a href="http://voices.nationalgeographic.com/2014/10/19/roads-benefit-people-but-can-have-massive-environmental-costs">avoid the first cut</a>”. Once made, narrow cuts through forested areas tend to grow and spread.</p>
<p><strong>2.</strong> Recognise that efforts to pave existing roads also have consequences. Paved roads mean greater, year-round access to wilderness areas and faster vehicle speeds that put wildlife at more risk.</p>
<p><strong>3.</strong> Realise that the secondary effects of projects such as roads and mines are often worse than the project itself. Environmental impact assessments must include both direct and indirect effects, such as pollution or poaching.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c5cIvHeNXmk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Secondary effects can be fatal. As shown in this shocking video, a new highway has opened up the Peruvian Amazon to devastating damage from illegal gold miners.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><strong>4.</strong> Put more emphasis on so-called <a href="http://www.theoilandgasyear.com/articles/islands-in-the-forest-offshore-inland-development-of-camisea/">“offshore” projects</a>, which might be deep in wilderness areas but don’t require new road networks. Instead, workers use helicopters or traverse rivers to reach the site.</p>
<p><strong>5.</strong> Encourage lenders and other involved parties to get involved in projects early, when plans can be more easily shaped or cancelled altogether.</p>
<p><strong>6.</strong> Develop better tools to allow financial institutions and others to evaluate the environmental and social consequences of projects.</p>
<p><strong>7.</strong> Financial institutions must also enlist people with appropriate environmental and social expertise. Too often, experts are overridden by economists and project proponents.</p>
<p><strong>8.</strong> Resist the temptation to allow projects with obvious environmental or social harms to proceed based on the fear that if a responsible development bank doesn’t do it, <a href="http://alert-conservation.org/issues-research-highlights/2015/2/10/the-worlds-two-most-dangerous-environmental-trends?rq=bndes">someone else will</a>. We call this “the ‘devil you know’ dilemma”.</p>
<p><strong>9.</strong> Seek greater involvement from non-governmental organisations and the public, especially those who stand to be affected directly.</p>
<h2>The bigger picture</h2>
<p>Our research is being used as the foundation for a global lobbying effort by scientists and environmentalists to persuade the G20 leaders to rethink their wildly ambitious infrastructure bonanza. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-03/cp-nst022715.php">Our statement</a> is being supported by some of the world’s most eminent research leaders, members of national science academies, and even holders of Knighthoods and other similar honours.</p>
<p>Nobody is saying that the world doesn’t need more and better infrastructure, especially in developing nations trying to raise their living standards. </p>
<p>But the business-as-usual model simply isn’t working. The price for nature and our global environment is far too high. For our natural world, we are staring straight at a fatal future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38418/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bill Laurance receives funding from the Australian Research Council and other scientific and philanthropic organisations. In addition to his appointment as Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University, he also holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. This chair is co-sponsored by Utrecht University and WWF-Netherlands.
</span></em></p>The G20 has pledged to spend more than US$60 trillion on new infrastructure in the next 15 years, much of which will affect pristine areas. Without a solid plan, the environmental toll could be huge.Bill Laurance, Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate, James Cook UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346002015-01-27T22:41:41Z2015-01-27T22:41:41ZWhy Sydney’s global infrastructure hub should be wary of PPPs<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/69725/original/image-20150122-27551-1cpuodb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A global infrastructure shortfall looms - but governments need to carefully assess the merits of private capital.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/408701960/in/photolist-C7GRw-rvLMe-8uGDam-gJvfd-8K11NN-5z5xgm-auSdAB-4pH9g8-d3mrrb-iVFkdw-aD5nGM-6ecu1y-pFjDvH-QYUcU-2eLLb-6FSVnk-6Bh5W8-5GCNYJ-9DSRqU-n244Nf-69dsV6-ELS9m-eqySu3-kMtWpt-7VV98t-X94Td-hkQAiA-dYueGw-9kSBvS-3XUjTe-nLktuk-bTh172-3Cw1cR-oZh7ga-yKr5j-nyd7g-dttojn-6S7VKd-grf1U2-pe2cpX-pTLkkP-nWEt78-atyG93-aNwgL6-4d5LCZ-gWAdmf-9cdh3R-9i6b5b-65BmYQ-9gFcfu">Flickr/Trey Ratcliff</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While in Davos representing Australia at the World Economic Forum, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has <a href="http://mpegmedia.abc.net.au/rn/podcast/2015/01/bst_20150122_0808.mp3">enthusiastically extolled the virtues</a> of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/building-big-does-australia-need-a-global-infrastructure-hub-32026">Global Infrastructure Hub</a> as a way of funding an infrastructure shortfall, particularly in developed nations.</p>
<p>Frydenberg told the ABC:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There is a great deal of interest here at Davos in what Australia is doing because essentially this infrastructure hub is a knowledge sharing platform. It is about sharing best practice across the funding of infrastructure, the construction of infrastructure and the prioritising of infrastructure. It is estimated there is a $50 trillion deficit in infrastructure over the next decade and Australia had a real strength in this area.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/g20-brisbane">Brisbane last November, G20 countries</a> endorsed the idea of the establishing the hub and agreed to establish it in Sydney to harness perceived Australian expertise, especially in Public Private Partnerships (PPPs). </p>
<p>I am not ideologically for or against PPPs and can see the case for them every time I visit a developing country to give governance advice and walk through a brand new terminal that cannot be the most important priority for limited government capital in poor cash-strapped states. But I am arithmetically opposed to PPPs which do not add up, cautious about self-interested spruiking, almost as leary of private monopolies as Adam Smith and concerned about the governance issues associated with PPPs. </p>
<h2>Australia’s experience</h2>
<p>Australia does have experience of PPPs from which the world can and should learn. But we may offer as many lessons in what not to do as what should be done. Brisbane is the city of bankrupt PPP tunnels and Sydney is the place where huge fees were generated even in projects that spectacularly failed or succeeded by extracting monopoly rents from privatised monopolies. </p>
<p>Melbourne’s Citylink innovated by including agreements to restrict competing routes (for instance, reducing the lanes on busy arterial Toorak Road and banning a Tullamarine rail-link) - measures that profit the contractor but limit the increase in total capacity by less than the capacity of the new road. When similar lane closing measures were included in Sydney’s cross city tunnel, the public outcry led to the cancellation of those measures. Sydney’s bankrupt Cross-City and Lane Cove tunnels were joined by two in Brisbane where "optimistic” traffic flow projections also led to bankruptcy (of the tunnel companies, not the scheme promoters). </p>
<p>For supporters of PPPs, this just showed that governments should take some of the core risks so that investors could enjoy more secure returns (suggested by experts at the B20 to be 7% real return). Accordingly, the new model has the government providing some of the funding and paying “availability fees” to the contractor. </p>
<p>An equally good example of value for money conundrum was the now-dumped East-West link in Melbourne. This involved government providing the bulk of the funding (A$4 billion), with the contractor providing A$2 billion, construction management and ongoing maintenance worth less than A$5 million per annum (based on a much larger <a href="http://www.leightoncontractors.com.au/projects/gateway-motorway">contract</a> for maintaining two bridges and 20km of motorway in Brisbane for 14.5 years cost $80 million). </p>
<p>At the end of the 25 years, the tunnel would have reverted to the government. This was, in essence, a very expensive hire purchase agreement. If the money had been borrowed at the Commonwealth’s 15 year bond rate Victoria could have paid for the maintenance and applied the rest of the A$340 million to paying off the loan in 13 years rather than 25 (leading to the state being better off by more than $4 billion).</p>
<p>To the extent that the undisclosed escalation clause increases the A$340 million, the disparities merely increase. The difference between the two represents the higher costs of borrowing by the contractor, the profit and the fees. Ironically, one of the problems with the East Link project was that it was hard to see value for money (VFM). If the government had chosen a less expensive means of funding, it might have come much closer to VFM standards. </p>
<h2>Economics of PPPs</h2>
<p>This raises a more general question about the economics of PPPs. Economist Nick Gruen <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/11/25/gruen-paying-for-australia%E2%80%99s-infrastructure-deficit">demonstrated</a> that “hard” infrastructure projects, such as roads and water projects are inherently more expensive as a result of higher interest rates, transaction costs and the need to make a profit. He estimated that, even after adjusting for risk, NSW is A$4.6 billion worse off for having chosen PPPs for some of its motorways.</p>
<p>Why should governments choose more expensive infrastructure? Expensive infrastructure is a problem for growth, not a solution. It raises the costs of other businesses and also raises the cost of capital for exporting and import competing businesses by providing such good returns on less risky investments. Business should be careful not to promote the interests of some businesses that would make money out of more expensive infrastructure for business in general.</p>
<p>The irony of arguments from the banking and finance sector that infrastructure should be funded from more expensive sources is that much of the extra expense is generated by the profits they demand and the fees they extract. Where a government ends up paying A$340 million per annum in “availability payments” instead of A$65 million in interest and maintenance - preventing the state paying down an extra A$4 billion debt - the argument is intellectually bankrupt.</p>
<h2>Governance issues</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://integrity20.org/">Global Integrity summit</a> considered infrastructure governance issues in some detail. Here’s the World Bank’s Vice President in charge of integrity, Leonard McCarthy: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“At their best, PPPs can provide rapid injections of cash from private financiers, delivery of quality services, and overall cost-effectiveness the public sector can’t achieve on its own. But at their worst, PPPs can also drive up costs, under-deliver services, harm the public interest, and introduce new opportunities for fraud, collusion, and corruption.</p>
</blockquote><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Charles Sampford receives funding from the ARC, DFAT and Griffith University. I would materially benefit from the building of the East West link</span></em></p>While in Davos representing Australia at the World Economic Forum, Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has enthusiastically extolled the virtues of the Global Infrastructure Hub as a way of funding an…Charles Sampford, Director, Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/345662014-11-25T19:23:50Z2014-11-25T19:23:50ZBeware overselling the case for free trade<p>Following a fortnight of intense Australian international engagement in APEC and the G20, last week saw the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of negotiations with China over a much-anticipated free trade agreement. Whispers now abound of one with India close on the horizon. </p>
<p>The agreements, (along with recently-concluded ones with Japan and South Korea) were a testament to tireless bilateral negotiation by successive Australian governments, and will do much to open certain sectors for freer trade. </p>
<p>But for all the excited expectation of future gains, it is critical we appreciate what the case for free trade actually promises. </p>
<p>Even granting its many well-acknowledged assumptions, we must take care not to oversell the case for free trade – in no small part because to do so will leave us ill-prepared to consider the kind of economy we want, and whether simply “more market” is the right way to get it.</p>
<h2>Free trade all the way</h2>
<p>Free trade has been the mainstay of Australian economic policy - even after the 2008 financial crisis. (“<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ken-henry-slams-australian-economic-mercantilism-20140916-10hv2o.html">Australian mercantilism</a>” was how former Australian Treasury Secretary Ken Henry controversially described it.) </p>
<p>Whereas the murky world of finance plunged the world into economic disarray, free trade is seen as the way out of the mess; the market’s invisible hand trusted to guide economic activity towards greater efficiency and welfare. </p>
<p>Free trade has such prestige because the economic case for it is incredibly powerful. Since 1817, an almost unassailable argument for free trade has been built around a central tenet of <a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/bios/Ricardo.html">David Ricardo’s</a> principle of comparative advantage. </p>
<p>Ricardo’s insight: under free trade countries will specialise in goods they can produce relatively less inefficiently than others, and trade to acquire goods they are relatively more inefficient at producing – basically “outsourcing” the production of less efficiently produced goods.</p>
<h2>What the case for free trade doesn’t promise</h2>
<p>But let’s be clear about the gains that the case promises – and those it doesn’t. Comparative advantage envisages that free trade will deliver immediate consumption benefits – people get more goods – due to production being more efficiently located globally. </p>
<p>These gains are nothing to be sneezed at, though there are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/nov/20/why-isnt-the-government-being-held-to-account-on-the-china-free-trade-deal">live questions</a> concerning how real some of the numbers being thrown around actually are. But the list of things that the standard case does not focus on is somewhat longer – and not insignificant. </p>
<p>First, the case for free trade says nothing about dynamic gains over time – that is, economic growth and development. Economists since the late 1700s have understood that exposing newly-developing industries to international trade may well realise short-term gains, but might also lead to longer-term inefficiency if these industries are initially too fragile to survive the storms of global competition.</p>
<p>We must be careful and clear about the trade-offs we are willing to make about present and future economic gain.</p>
<p>Second, although advocates of unbridled free trade often hint that “everyone” wins through free trade, that isn’t necessarily what the case for it says.</p>
<p>In the post-trade wash up we might find that gains are concentrated in some hands rather than others. Medical service providers might do well, but auto factory workers might be out of jobs. </p>
<p>There will always be winners and losers. While trade gains might be shared across all, this is often unlikely unless separate action is taken – probably by government – to make sure the initial losers are compensated through gains that have been garnered by others.</p>
<p>Finally, even if free trade leads to immediate and well distributed gains, free trade might have other strategic effects beyond consumption. For example, certain patterns of trade can make a country more dependent on foreign imports relevant to security or the broader national importance - such as foreign energy, food or armaments. </p>
<p>Again, political decision-making is critical to ensuring that the desired balance is struck between short-term economic efficiency and broader geopolitical positioning.</p>
<h2>The inevitability - and necessity - of political choice</h2>
<p>Cheery advocacy for free trade often brushes over the unavoidable fact that in trade policy – as in so much else – little is costless; in order to create some opportunities, something must be foregone. Specialisation in one industry implies that others must languish. Pursuing some goals means others must be sacrificed. One person’s advantage is often to another’s detriment.</p>
<p>Overselling the case for free trade can mask these trade-offs – the case is powerful, but it does not purport to answer these questions. Overselling blithely throws to the market settlement of political decisions that it is ill-suited to making. </p>
<p>Free trade can sometimes be imagined as something of both a start and an end to the question of economic policy-setting in today’s global economy. But in truth it should be neither – it must be preceded by consideration of what kind of economy we want and which gains we seek through international trade, and followed by careful attention to how these gains are to be distributed across a population. </p>
<p>These are issues too important merely to be left to the vagaries of the market.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34566/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Vishaal Kishore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Following a fortnight of intense Australian international engagement in APEC and the G20, last week saw the culmination of nearly a decade’s worth of negotiations with China over a much-anticipated free…Vishaal Kishore, Principal Fellow / Honorary Associate Professor, Melbourne School of Government, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/344942014-11-21T01:49:43Z2014-11-21T01:49:43ZAnti-corruption bar set higher, but Australia still has more to do<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65144/original/image-20141120-4481-owdvzb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Many countries still need to clean up their act on anti-corruption and whistleblowing protections.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite the adoption of a third two-year G20 <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/2015-16%20_g20_anti-corruption_action_plan_0.pdf">Anti-Corruption Action Plan</a>, corruption received only a few lines in the latest G20 leaders’ communique.</p>
<p>The credibility of the G20 as a whole now rests on doing better on the detail. After all, the driving reason why leaders have consolidated anti-corruption measures as part of the core G20 agenda is to promote honesty and integrity in the world’s governmental and financial affairs.</p>
<p>The high point from the summit was G20 leaders’ decision to follow the G8 with <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/g20_high-level_principles_beneficial_ownership_transparency.pdf">High Level Principles on Beneficial Ownership Transparency</a>. This aims to ensure the real owners of corporations, trusts and other legal entities can be identified, in order to clamp down on the use of anonymous shell companies as vehicles for engaging in corruption and tax evasion.</p>
<p>Griffith University’s Professor <a href="http://star.worldbank.org/star/publication/puppet-masters">Jason Sharman</a> describes the text of the principles as – for the most part – a “sensible and realistic list of improvements, without over-promising”.</p>
<p>However, according to Sharman, they also face the inevitable problem that “talk is cheap”, with two big problems going to the credibility of G20 leaders and the G20 process.</p>
<p>The first trouble lies in the fact that the “new” G20 commitments essentially repeat promises made by most countries since 2003, through the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to require beneficial ownership information to be kept and made available. Despite these existing commitments, most of the countries involved have “spectacularly failed to do so, in law and practice” – as revealed by the subsequent research.</p>
<p>Contrary to some stereotypes, the worst offenders are not isolated tax havens, which have been responding to the moral and legal pressures to keep better records for years. It is the United States itself, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada and many others.</p>
<p>As Transparency International says, this is not reason to give up. Rather, the new G20 principles mean “the moral and political mandate for action has now been lifted to a new level” and, in some ways, brought home to roost. But it prompts the question: why should anyone believe these new commitments, when they just repeat old unfulfilled promises?</p>
<p>The second problem lies in the story that G20 countries are telling each other, and the world, about the extent to which they are making progress towards their anti-corruption goals.</p>
<p>Also released on the second day of the Brisbane summit were the “<a href="https://www.g20.org/g20_priorities/g20_2014_agenda/fighting_corruption">accountability reports</a>” of each G20 country, in which they self-assess whether they have achieved commitments in the previous action plan. There is some confusion, mixed with gilding of the lily.</p>
<p>Eleven of the 19 countries report that their country already requires “the beneficial ownership and company formation of all legal persons organised for profit [to] be reported”, but in how many countries are these requirements real?</p>
<p>The UK’s claim is based on proposed reforms; its fine print confirms these have not yet been implemented. Turkey – next year’s G20 president – claims to have the requirements in place when actually it does not, including still being a country that allows bearer shares, which is one of the worst, most untraceable ways of transferring company ownership.</p>
<p>This year’s president, Australia, does not seem to be sure. Its <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/accountability_report_questionnaire_2014_australia.DOCX">individual</a> accountability report claims that, “yes” it has the necessary requirements in place under basic company registration rules. The <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/acwg_accountability_report_annex_1.pdf">all-country summary</a> contradicts this, by appearing to confess the true answer, which is “no”.</p>
<h2>Whistleblower protection: getting there … or not?</h2>
<p>Unfortunately, there are other issues on which countries are reporting progress that they are not actually making – potentially on a more serious scale.</p>
<p>In their accountability reports, every country claims to have whistleblower protection legislation in place for the public sector, and all but four for the private sector. One might presume, or hope, this means laws that at least meet the <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/G20_Whistleblower_Protection.pdf">principles</a> agreed by the G20 itself in 2011, on advice from the OECD. Yet we actually know that it doesn’t.</p>
<p>In fact, 12 of the 19 countries are claiming they have this legislation in place when a comprehensive assessment this year by Blueprint for Free Speech, Griffith and Melbourne Universities and Transparency International Australia showed their laws – if they exist at all – are missing six or more of the 14 basic elements that define reasonable best practice.</p>
<p>Australia is again no saint. There is no mention of major gaps in its new federal public sector law, like the fact that claims of corruption against any government minister, politician, elected official or member of their staff will attract no protection at all.</p>
<p>And despite claiming to have protection laws in place for private sector whistleblowers, Australia’s limited Corporations Act provisions are missing or defective on nine of the 14 criteria.</p>
<p>Australia’s self-assessment simply identifies that, as a new move, ASIC proposes to establish an “Office of the Whistleblower”. What it fails to disclose is that this is in response to much more far-reaching recommendations of the June 2014 <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/parliamentary_business/committees/senate/economics/asic/final_report/index">Senate Economics Committee inquiry</a>, which identified the need for more serious overhaul of Australia’s inadequate private sector whistleblowing laws.</p>
<h2>Can we do better?</h2>
<p>Can Australia, or the G20 as a whole, do better than this? The answer is we must.</p>
<p>Why would Australia not also show its leadership by completing the decision to join the <a href="http://www.opengovpartnership.org/">Open Government Partnership</a>?</p>
<p>Or announce that it intends to become a full member of the <a href="https://eiti.org/eiti">Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative</a>, another international mechanism endorsed and encouraged by the G20?</p>
<p>Or back its commitments to transparency with a positive blueprint for open data and citizen rights to information, rather than abolishing the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as is currently underway?</p>
<p>Or say how it intends to clean up its own “know your customer” requirements and enforcement, under the new beneficial ownership principles?</p>
<p>All these issues signal what many average citizens fear – there’s a huge gap between the rhetoric of leaders and the reality of their governments’ actions.</p>
<p><em>A longer version of this article can be read <a href="http://www.griffith.edu.au/business-government/centre-governance-public-policy/research-programs/public-integrity-and-anti-corruption">here.</a></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34494/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>AJ Brown has received funding from the Australian Research Council and other research funders including national, state and international government agencies. He is also a non-executive director of Transparency International Australia.</span></em></p>Despite the adoption of a third two-year G20 Anti-Corruption Action Plan, corruption received only a few lines in the latest G20 leaders’ communique. The credibility of the G20 as a whole now rests on…A J Brown, Professor of Public Policy & Law, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343932014-11-21T01:43:53Z2014-11-21T01:43:53ZHow much bang for a buck? Working out the returns on government spending<p>G20 leaders have put growth and employment at the centre of the global agenda.</p>
<p>To <a href="https://www.g20.org/g20_priorities/g20_2014_agenda/g20_comprehensive_growth_strategies_macroeconomic_and_structural">spur collective growth by more than 2% over five years</a>, member countries have agreed to implement a package of structural reforms (among others, increasing quality investment in infrastructure, reducing barriers to trade, creating more employment opportunities, and increasing market competition).</p>
<p>Such policies are proposed to overcome the allegedly limited effectiveness of standard monetary and fiscal policy tools. Given historic‐low interest rates in most G20 countries, conventional monetary policy is severely limited in its ability to stimulate growth and affect the business cycle. </p>
<p>The use of fiscal policy is even more controversial and has triggered heated debates in Europe: German chancellor Angela Merkel has steadily defended the virtues of fiscal austerity, while Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi has called for expansionary fiscal spending to boost growth. </p>
<p>But what do we know about the returns from fiscal spending, really?</p>
<h2>Quantifying the effect of fiscal spending</h2>
<p>Academic researchers have found it challenging to quantify the gains from fiscal policy. What is the return from spending one dollar of taxpayers’ money? “How much bang for a buck?” The answer depends on many factors. </p>
<p>Even the most stylised textbook macroeconomic models tell us that a country may reap different returns depending on elements such as its exchange rate regime, health of its financial system and where it find itself in a boom or a bust when implementing fiscal policy moves.</p>
<p>Consequently, the correct measurement of the impact of fiscal policy calls for carefully designed macroeconometric models that consider a myriad of interrelations. To add to the difficulty, fiscal policy decisions usually come after long (often heated) political discussions, typically implemented with some lags. </p>
<p>This means that there are potentially two powerful and very different fiscal policy channels to consider - firstly, the impact of actual changes in public spending; and secondly the impact of the announcements of future fiscal policies (because they can influence consumer and entrepreneurial decisions). </p>
<h2>Higher returns during recession</h2>
<p>Despite these qualifications, some consensus has emerged on when fiscal multipliers (that is, returns from fiscal spending) may be large: recessions. <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/efremcastelnuovo/home">Research that I conducted</a> at the Melbourne Institute with a pool of international co-authors (Giovanni Caggiano, Valentina Colombo and Gabriela Nodari) showed that one dollar of public money spent during the 2007-09 crisis could generate 2.5 dollars of output in five year’s time.</p>
<p>Similarly, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2045192">UNSW Professor James Morley and coauthors</a> found large and persistent government spending multipliers during periods of considerable economic slack, a finding consistent with the research mentioned above.</p>
<p>These empirical results ‐ higher returns from fiscal spending in recessions ‐ are consistent with theoretical predictions. This is because, during economic slack, a country’s central bank refrains from raising interest rates after a fiscal spending shock. Recent theoretical contributions based on modern macroeconomic frameworks tend support to this prediction.</p>
<p>This implies that the increase in aggregate output due to such a fiscal policy move is not “counterbalanced” by higher borrowing costs for consumers and firms, as interest rates remain low. And so consumers and firms do not reduce their spending. Technically, no “crowding out” of consumption and investment occurs. This implies that the output effect of a fiscal policy move can be eventually large. </p>
<h2>A warning</h2>
<p>So, should policymakers push hard on the fiscal policy pedal? A warning is in order here. High returns from fiscal spending are likely to occur only in countries whose public debt is judged by the markets to be sustainable. If not, fiscal multipliers can be negative, as shown by <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030439321200116X">some recent research</a>. </p>
<p>This is because countries with a too high debt‐to‐GDP ratio risk falling into a vicious spiral. The increase in public spending raises concerns in financial markets and this pushes up the risk‐premium on the public debt issued to finance the public spending. </p>
<p>The premium then translates into a higher debt service which increases future debt burden, thereby reducing the room of fiscally unsound countries to issue further government securities.</p>
<p>Fiscal policy is potentially a very powerful instrument to boost growth in countries that are in severe economic conditions. But policymakers should be careful. At times, a one‐size‐fits‐all approach makes a lot of sense. In case of fiscal policy, it simply does not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34393/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Efrem Castelnuovo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>G20 leaders have put growth and employment at the centre of the global agenda. To spur collective growth by more than 2% over five years, member countries have agreed to implement a package of structural…Efrem Castelnuovo, Principal Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research - Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics and Business, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/340722014-11-20T04:17:47Z2014-11-20T04:17:47ZFrom selfies to climate change: the #G20 debate on Twitter<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/65053/original/image-20141120-29241-1fdk735.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">As the leaders were meeting at G20 the tweeters were tweeting their own thoughts on the global summit.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/palazzochigi/15607120989">Flickr/Palazzo Chigi </a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/g20-brisbane">G20 Summit</a> that brought many of the world’s most important leaders to Brisbane last weekend was also a major Twitter event.</p>
<p>Australian and international users expressed their concerns over the appearance of Russian warships off the Queensland coast, shared selfies from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s impromptu visit to Brisbane’s Caxton St nightlife hub and called for action on issues ranging from Ebola to climate change.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"533252905629794304"}"></div></p>
<p>For this first G20 summit in Australia, local disruptions and global coverage of key Brisbane landmarks were particularly keenly anticipated, and the QUT Social Media Research Group (<a href="http://socialmedia.qut.edu.au">SMRG</a>) turned its focus to mapping and tracking Twitter activity around this globally significant and locally disruptive event.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://mappingg20.cartodb.com">Mapping G20 project</a> developed a gazetteer containing the coordinates of buildings, landmarks, precincts and streets in Brisbane’s declared summit zones to map <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23g20">#G20</a>-related tweets.</p>
<p>This allowed us to map not only the more than 1,600 geo-located tweets within the Brisbane area, but also a further 17,000 that mentioned locations in the G20 zone within the text of the tweet, resulting in a number of interactive visualisations of the Brisbane G20 Twitter map.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64921/original/image-20141119-7492-1i4tsxt.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Brisbane G20 Twitter intensity map.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>From complaints about blocked-off roads to snapshots of the various leaders’ motorcades, the maps show the level of excitement around various locations and tracks the key events of the summit across Brisbane.</p>
<h2>Obama’s UQ impact on tweets</h2>
<p>The most tweeted-about location on the Brisbane G20 Twitter map was the University of Queensland, where US president Barack Obama spoke to an audience of 1,000 on Saturday.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to and over the course of the G20, UQ amassed 3,229 individual points (tweets) on our Twitter map of Brisbane, but the majority (65%) of these were retweets about Obama’s speech.</p>
<p>Other highly mentioned locations on the map were the Brisbane Airport (mentioned in 2,348 tweets, and the site of much delegate-spotting) and South Bank Parklands (mentioned in 1,270 tweets).</p>
<p>The most retweeted tweet on the Brisbane G20 Twitter map came from Queensland premier Campbell Newman, who welcomed Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to Brisbane City Hall on Sunday.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"533887149934780417"}"></div></p>
<p>Within the broader G20 dataset, the two most retweeted tweets featured world leaders cuddling our national treasure.</p>
<p>The Economist’s tweet picturing Russia’s Vladimir Putin holding an “alarmed” koala garnered more than 2,000 retweets to become the most retweeted G20-related tweet, closely followed by the White House’s tweet of US president Barack Obama enjoying a “koalaty moment”.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"534378055901667329"}"></div></p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"533768927482896384"}"></div></p>
<p>As an extension to the G20 social media mapping project, the SMRG also developed the <a href="http://g20.thehypometer.com">G20 Hypometer</a>, a virtual live scorecard especially developed to measure Twitter conversation about the G20 Leader’s Summit and participating countries.</p>
<p>The G20 Hypometer is a simplified adaption of a <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/technology/web-platform-to-give-deeper-insight-into-social-media-content/story-e6frgakx-1227118684811?nk=c03365c9cbdbe6e45f561e3bd0fd2a0d">social media analytics suite</a> being developed at QUT to measure the “hype” around television shows, brands, sporting events and other themes.</p>
<p>It tracked real-time conversation around the Twitter hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23g20">#G20</a> (and other unofficial hashtags being used) and the leaders and countries mentioned within the data to create a running total of G20 interactions for each country.</p>
<p>It also generated the daily stats for each country and for the overall conversation around the official and unofficial hashtags, and identified emerging trending topics during the event.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=349&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64922/original/image-20141119-7522-1nkagvf.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=439&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">G20 Hypometer.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Between October 23 and November 17, the G20 Hypometer recorded more than 1.02 million tweets that related to the G20, of which almost 400,000 referenced the US delegation in some form.</p>
<p>Obama’s speech at the University of Queensland alone peaked at 620 tweets per minute during his discussion of climate change and generated almost 20,000 tweets during the speech alone.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"533432266882437120"}"></div></p>
<p>For hashtags, the early running was dominated by the <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23OnYourAgenda">#OnYourAgenda</a> activist campaign, which sought to promote a number of topics to be discussed at the summit.</p>
<p>Later, the specific events of the day drove trending topics, with hashtags such as <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23Putin">#Putin</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23Ukraine">#Ukraine</a> becoming more prevalent as the event continued.</p>
<p>Towards the end, as the final communique was developed and implications for Australia’s own future policy agenda were debated, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23climatechange">#climatechange</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23auspol">#auspol</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23Brisbane">#Brisbane</a> also ranked highly.</p>
<p>In the coming weeks, the SMRG team will be delving deeper into the data collected during the G20 to identify key themes, influencers and locations.</p>
<p>A particular focus of our research will be on the reconfiguration of Brisbane’s urban space during the summit, the role that this rigorous zoning of the city played in an event that has been hailed by politicians and police as a <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/brisbane-g20/premier-basks-in-success-of-g20-brisbane-20141117-11o8u3.html">remarkable success</a> and how on-the-ground public reaction to the spatial disruptions brought by the G20 played out on social media.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34072/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Axel Bruns receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Darryl Woodford receives funding from QUTBluebox for the development of commercial social media analytics.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Katie Prowd receives funding from QUTBluebox for the development of commercial social media analytics.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peta Mitchell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The G20 Summit that brought many of the world’s most important leaders to Brisbane last weekend was also a major Twitter event. Australian and international users expressed their concerns over the appearance…Peta Mitchell, Senior Research Fellow, Social Media Research Group, Queensland University of TechnologyAxel Bruns, Professor, Creative Industries, Queensland University of TechnologyDarryl Woodford, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Queensland University of TechnologyKatie Prowd, Assistant Data Analyst, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/344352014-11-19T10:26:00Z2014-11-19T10:26:00ZThe G20: thanks for noticing<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64970/original/image-20141119-31618-wdjoob.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s nothing quite like being the centre of attention, even if it costs A$400 million to do so. Now that the curtain has come down on Australia’s moment in the diplomatic spotlight, taxpayers might reasonably ask what we’ve got to show for hosting the G20 and the greatest collection of the world’s political movers and shakers we’ve seen in this country.</p>
<p>Whether this event marks the sort of watershed moment some seem to think will only become clear over the next few years. Undoubtedly, there are some impressive outcomes, even if one of the most potentially consequential – the free trade deal with China – is the result of years of painstaking bilateral negotiations, not a sudden epiphany on Xi Jinping’s part after a bout of koala cuddling.</p>
<p>The good news is Xi seems to like us, or he does judging by his carefully calibrated remarks to the Australian parliament, at least. The idea that China and Australia should develop a comprehensive strategic partnership is a bold one, and one that some will undoubtedly see as an effort by China to dilute Australia’s strategic ties to the US.</p>
<p>Perhaps it is. Even so, it is something that Australia ought to embrace. If Australia does actually have a clear cut sense of national interest, it surely revolves around having good relations with our number one trading partner and the principal influence on our future collective economic welfare.</p>
<p>Despite some <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-consensus-about-beijings-new-bank-33587">missteps</a> over China’s proposed infrastructure bank and premature celebrations about the course of democratic reform in the People’s Republic, the Abbott government clearly recognises China’s economic importance. But this has not stopped it simultaneously conducting a strategic dialogue with the usual suspects – the US and Japan.</p>
<p>Yet many observers have also noted the striking contrast between the rhetoric employed by Xi and Barack Obama in their respective set piece speeches during their visits. Xi was charm and reassurance personified, while Obama took the opportunity to pursue his own agenda with little regard for its impact on his host. So much for all that effort currying favour with great and powerful friends.</p>
<p>Some may say that Tony Abbott only had himself to blame for trying to shut down debate on climate change which is – or ought to be – the most important item on any international agenda. That it came to dominate the debate anyway is a reminder of where the real power in world affairs still lies: the potentially much more effective and consequential G2 – China and the US – made the running on a bilateral basis and everyone else had to fall into line.</p>
<p>Such an outcome will not surprise those readers of a more realist bent. It may still be the way of the world, perhaps, but it begs the question of quite what the purpose of a potentially more inclusive grouping like the G20 actually is. Was anything new actually achieved that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise? What influence can so-called middle powers like Australia <a href="https://www.academia.edu/1028147/Can_Australia_save_the_world_The_limits_and_possibilities_of_middle_power_diplomacy">actually exert</a> in shaping the international agenda?</p>
<p>The great potential attraction of multilateralism is that it necessarily diffuses power. If there is a genuinely open-ended discussion of key issues like climate change or – more appropriately in the G20’s case, perhaps, financial sector reform – and a commitment to develop collaborative, binding policy outcomes, then the great and the not-so-great-powers will be equally constrained.</p>
<p>This is also why – other than at moments of profound crisis – the basis for deals and agreements is mapped out well in advance by the lesser lights of international diplomacy. No-one likes being ambushed, surprised or hectored, which may explain why Vladimir Putin went home early, apparently in a huff. Given that he’s a sour puss at the best of times, though, it’s a bit hard to tell. </p>
<p>The unexpectedly cool relations with the US also explain why an otherwise productive series of international encounters was not the unalloyed triumph Abbott may have hoped for. It was equally discombobulating for some of the Murdoch empire’s hacks, too. Which is the least worst option – saying something critical about the alliance, or seeming to give tacit support for Obama and his criticism of Australia’s environmental policies?</p>
<p>So has Australia announced its presence on the global stage as core Indo-Pacific power as some would like to believe? Up to a point, perhaps. Certainly much of the region relies on what we can dig from the ground, and we can always be relied upon to provide a convenient place to establish military bases and listening posts, but there’s nothing new in any of that. </p>
<p>Can we translate any of this potential leverage into an effective, even a distinctively Australian foreign policy perspective? Time will tell, but to judge from the last 50 years or so, the omens are not good. Next time the diplomatic jamboree comes to town we won’t be the hosts, and we’ll once again be relegated to the back row of the photo ops. </p>
<p>Look on the bright side though, at least we won’t be paying for it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34435/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
There’s nothing quite like being the centre of attention, even if it costs A$400 million to do so. Now that the curtain has come down on Australia’s moment in the diplomatic spotlight, taxpayers might…Mark Beeson, Professor of International Politics, Murdoch UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343082014-11-18T19:23:02Z2014-11-18T19:23:02ZUN Green Climate Fund: it’s time for Australia to step up<p>The G20 summit in Brisbane has put the pressure on Australia to boost its action on climate change not just at home but also internationally through a new UN-backed fund.</p>
<p>The summit yielded <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/16/us-g20-summit-climatefund-japan-idUSKCN0J00UL20141116">major pledges</a> to the Green Climate Fund by the US (US$3 billion) and Japan (US$1.5 billion). Combined with <a href="http://www.trust.org/item/20140926123842-vu9os/?source=fiBlogs">earlier pledges</a> by France, Germany and others, the fund is now three-quarters of the way towards reaching its initial funding target of US$10 billion by the time of a <a href="http://www.gcfund.org/fileadmin/00_customer/documents/Press/GCF_Press_Release_2014_11_07_pledging_conference_berlin.pdf">pledging conference</a> this Thursday. </p>
<p>Even Canada, which often <a href="http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20140923/canada-australia-axis-carbon-obstacle-climate-pact">sides</a> with Australia on a go-slow response to climate change, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/red-faces-for-tony-abbott-on-green-climate-fund-20141117-11oca7.html">plans</a> to chip in. </p>
<p>Should Australia join other wealthy countries in making a substantial pledge to the Fund?</p>
<h2>Australia backs away</h2>
<p>After the Brisbane summit, Prime Minister Tony Abbott <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/17/tony-abbott-rules-out-contributions-australia-green-climate-fund">stated</a> that “we are doing a very great deal and I suppose given what we are doing we don’t intend, at this time, to do more”. </p>
<p>But the claim that Australia is doing even a “great deal” on climate change just doesn’t hold water. Even if Australia had an ambitious domestic agenda, which the Coalition’s Direct Action strategy <a href="https://theconversation.com/palmer-deal-gives-green-light-to-direct-action-experts-react-33601">patently isn’t</a>, reducing domestic pollution isn’t the end of the story. </p>
<p>As I’ve argued <a href="https://theconversation.com/backing-away-from-climate-funding-will-further-damage-australias-credentials-20087">previously</a>, it makes both strategic and moral sense for Australia to invest in low-cost opportunities to curb emissions in developing countries, while also helping vulnerable countries in our region to cope with cyclones, floods and other climate risks.</p>
<p>Both <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/17/tony-abbott-rules-out-contributions-australia-green-climate-fund">the Prime Minister</a> and Foreign Minister <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2014/jb_sp_140923b.aspx">Julie Bishop</a> have cited aid to Pacific island countries as an example of Australia’s existing international climate action. </p>
<p>The Foreign Minister has also <a href="http://foreignminister.gov.au/speeches/Pages/2014/jb_sp_140923b.aspx">harked back</a> to the A$600 million in “fast-start” climate finance that the previous government delivered over three years to mid-2013.</p>
<p>But since taking office, the Coalition has been reticent on further climate finance pledges. It has also <a href="https://theconversation.com/backing-away-from-climate-funding-will-further-damage-australias-credentials-20087">poured cold water</a> on the prospects of an Australian contribution to the Fund. Nor has the government spelt out a credible plan for meeting its share of a collective <a href="http://devpolicy.org/climate-finance-getting-to-100-billion-a-year-by-2020-20101110/">promise</a> that wealthy countries have made under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Accord">Copenhagen climate Accord</a> in 2009 to mobilise US$100 billion a year for developing countries by 2020.</p>
<h2>Why the UN Green Climate Fund?</h2>
<p>The Fund <a href="http://www.gcfund.org/about/the-fund.html">aims</a> to help poorer countries achieve the shift to low-polluting development that is resilient to climate-related impacts. The Fund is unique in its capacity to catalyse the kind of large-scale investments required for this shift. </p>
<p>As well as channelling public resources, the Fund aims to leverage much larger private sector resources by reducing investment risks. In the longer term, this will help to lighten the burden on the budgets of wealthy countries.</p>
<p>How can we be sure that the Fund will be effective? The idea that multilateral agencies fritter away taxpayers’ money is a common bogeyman. But many larger multilateral development funds and programs perform considerably <a href="http://www.cgdev.org/sites/default/files/QUODA_final_revised_september.pdf">better</a> (see page 16) than Australia (and indeed than most other bilateral government aid agencies) on efficiency and other measures of aid quality.</p>
<p>Through a painstaking design process, the Green Climate Fund has earned the confidence of both developed and developing countries. Under the previous government Australia played a central role in this process as <a href="http://aid.dfat.gov.au/MediaReleases/Pages/Australia-appointed-co-chair-of-the-Green-Climate-Fund-Board.aspx">co-chair</a> of its board, and worked to ensure that the Fund will operate effectively with adequate financial and social safeguards.</p>
<h2>How much should Australia contribute?</h2>
<p>In a 2011 <a href="http://devpolicy.org/climate-change-financing-for-poorer-countries-how-australia-can-meet-its-commitment20111025/">working paper</a>, ANU colleagues Frank Jotzo, Peter Wood and I calculated Australia’s fair share of any collective climate change financing pledge to be 2-3%, based on its share of wealthy countries’ income and greenhouse gas emissions. This is in line with Australia’s recent commitment to the Global Environment Facility of <a href="http://www.thegef.org/gef/sites/thegef.org/files/documents/GEF.A.5.07.Rev_.01_Report_on_the_Sixth_Replenishment_of_the_GEF_Trust_Fund_May_22_2014.pdf">2.4%</a> (see page 238) and other recent analysis published in <a href="http://news.gcfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/nclimate2390.pdf">Nature Climate Change</a>. </p>
<p>Based on a US$10 billion target, a share of 2-3% would amount to US$200-300 million (A$230-340 million) or around A$60-85 million a year if spread over four years like the US pledge. This annual figure equates to less than 2% of Australia’s A$5 billion <a href="http://devpolicy.org/less-aid-less-transparency-the-2014-15-aid-budget-and-the-10-aid-cut-20140514-2/">aid budget</a>. And it represents a small share of over A$3 billion that Australia spends on public <a href="http://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.uk/files/odi-assets/publications-opinion-files/9260.pdf">fossil fuel subsidies</a> each year. </p>
<p>Even if the Fund’s initial target is met (which seems highly likely after the Brisbane summit), wealthy countries will need to ramp up their climate finance efforts further to achieve the US$100 billion-a-year target by 2020. But, as our <a href="https://theconversation.com/cutting-subsidies-to-fossil-fuels-could-help-australia-meet-its-financial-climate-commitments-4026">research</a> has shown, Australia could readily achieve a 2-3% share of the 2020 target by mobilising a range of public and private funding sources. </p>
<p>Assuming that Australia continues to maintain some level of climate change financing, it’s reasonable to expect that it will deliver its contribution through a range of channels. These channels could include Australia’s existing bilateral aid partnerships and smaller, special-purpose multilateral funds. </p>
<p>But if it refuses to back the Fund altogether, Australia would miss the chance to stimulate much larger investments from a modest public outlay.</p>
<p>Other wealthy countries of various political persuasions have concluded that it makes more sense to support the Fund than to snipe at it from the margins. Australia should not turn its back on a credible and important institution that it and many other countries have worked hard to build.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34308/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Pickering has previously consulted for the Australian Government on climate finance through the Australian National University. The 2011 working paper mentioned in the article was supported by World Vision Australia, the Australian Conservation Foundation and The Climate Institute.</span></em></p>The G20 summit in Brisbane has put the pressure on Australia to boost its action on climate change not just at home but also internationally through a new UN-backed fund. The summit yielded major pledges…Jonathan Pickering, Visiting Fellow, Development Policy Centre, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/343582014-11-18T19:22:57Z2014-11-18T19:22:57ZClimate not included: the G20 growth target will accelerate crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64819/original/8yt7cnrp-1416292923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">G20 leaders agreed to an economic growth target of 2.1% by 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Despite Australia’s best efforts, climate change muscled its way onto the G20 agenda. The summit’s <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/brisbane_g20_leaders_summit_communique.pdf">final communique</a> included one paragraph restating the importance of international negotiations in Paris at the end of 2015.</p>
<p>But much more should have been done on climate at this G20 meeting. Clearly missing from post-summit analysis is the following criticism: the G20’s adopted economic <a href="https://theconversation.com/search?q=g20+growth+target">growth target of 2.1%</a> will accelerate the climate crisis unless this activity is fully integrated with efforts to mitigate climate change.</p>
<h2>Climate at the G20</h2>
<p>The United States and China’s surprise joint announcement of <a href="https://theconversation.com/landmark-us-china-pledge-is-a-step-towards-2c-climate-goal-34140">mitigation targets</a> was deliberately made a few days before the G20 summit began. Then during the summit, President Barack Obama made a point of highlighting climate change in several <a href="https://theconversation.com/obama-protect-barrier-reef-from-climate-change-34278">prominent speeches</a>. </p>
<p>Two crucial announcements were made about <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/15/united-states-and-japan-announce-45-billion-pledges-green-climate-fund-g">new contributions</a> to the UN Green Climate Fund: pledges of US$3 billion from the United States and US$1.5 billion from Japan. </p>
<p>And, after reported “<a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/g20/climate-change-in-g20-communique-after-trench-warfare-20141116-11no3q.html">trench warfare</a>”, Abbott was overruled in his proposed deletion of wording about fossil fuel subsidies from the summit’s final communique. </p>
<p>Taken together these events suggest, among other things, the low regard in which our prime minister is held by global leaders on climate change. </p>
<p>Nevertheless Abbott’s obstruction of attempts to make global warming a focal point for G20 discussion has slowed progress towards an effective post-2020 mitigation protocol at the UN climate conference in Paris next year.</p>
<p>This does not mean an agreement will not be finalised next year. The China-US announcement conclusively indicated that a new, albeit insufficiently ambitious, deal on targets is now within reach. </p>
<p>But without a discussion of climate change at the G20, we missed the chance to ensure that “super-charging economic growth” is reframed by and made compatible with global climate goals, so that all new major investment drives decarbonisation.</p>
<h2>The opportunity missed</h2>
<p>This G20 was an historic opportunity for global thought leadership and Australia, as the G20 host, was brilliantly placed to shape and drive that discussion. Several key reports had been launched in the weeks before the Brisbane meeting, providing it with crucial information to inform such an exchange.</p>
<p>Studies headed by <a href="http://newclimateeconomy.report/">Nicholas Stern</a> and <a href="http://unsdsn.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/DDPP_Digit.pdf">Jeffrey Sachs</a> respectively concluded that a relatively small portion of the trillions of dollars of global investment expected over the next two decades, if well-directed, could decarbonise the global economy. </p>
<p>With careful guidance, they argue, an effective transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources could happen while also meeting the social and economic goals and needs of developing economies, in particular. (This logic lies at the heart of China’s latest commitment to peaking emissions growth, and increasing its reliance on non-fossil fuels to 20% of total energy production, by no later than 2030.)</p>
<p>Meanwhile the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/ipccs-most-important-report-sets-stage-for-paris-climate-talks-33713">synthesis of its Fifth Assessment Report</a>, with its blunt review of available scientific data and projections, indicated that the time for effective emissions reduction has almost run out. </p>
<p>We are now rocketing towards a brutal world of rapid warming, unprecedented in the evolutionary history of the human species and catastrophic for most of life on Earth.</p>
<p>Agreement is desperately required between the world’s 20 largest economies about how to meet global social needs while respecting global ecological boundaries.</p>
<h2>A form of denial</h2>
<p>Instead, the G20 persisted in their siloed thinking about economic activity on the one hand, and action around mitigation on the other. Integrating these two elements was the opportunity missed.</p>
<p>The G20’s current vision for a resilient global economy, for food security, and for poverty eradication and development, which lie at the heart of its final communique, is delusional when viewed in this context. The goal of 2.1% annual global economic growth by 2018, which does not focus centrally on the need for emissions reduction, accelerates this crisis.</p>
<p>The summit’s final communique contains one paragraph on climate change. It is number 19 among 21 and merely provides an anodyne restatement of the obvious, about the importance of the UN’s Paris climate meeting next year. </p>
<p>Comments elsewhere in the communique, about improvements in energy efficiency and in the global gas market, and about rationalising and phasing out “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”, miss the point about the need for economic activity that drives urgent emissions reduction.</p>
<p>Other states could have kicked open the door for such discussion. Instead, diplomatic politeness, intellectual sloth and Australia’s obstructive agenda prevailed. </p>
<p>Under Abbott’s watch, Australia has resumed its role as a laggard state with dangerously disproportionate influence on global climate affairs. Australia is again an anchor, dragging along the murky ocean floor of climate negotiations, slowing their progress.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34358/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Christoff does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite Australia’s best efforts, climate change muscled its way onto the G20 agenda. The summit’s final communique included one paragraph restating the importance of international negotiations in Paris…Peter Christoff, Associate Professor, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341472014-11-17T19:18:13Z2014-11-17T19:18:13ZKoala diplomacy: Australian soft power saves the day at G20<p>Never before has Australia been more at the heart of global affairs. Here in Brisbane we have finished our year as G20 President, with the G20 leaders presenting their <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/brisbane_g20_leaders_summit_communique.pdf">communiqué</a>. </p>
<p>A series of significant bilateral speeches are following as the leaders of the US, Germany, China, Italy, UK and India make their way around the country, address the Commonwealth Parliament and meet with business, science and expatriate communities. </p>
<p>Australia is the President of the UN Security Council this <a href="http://www.un.org/en/sc/inc/pages/pdf/pow/powmonthly.pdf">month</a>, led by Ambassador <a href="http://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2014/november/1414760400/nick-bryant/heavy-liftin">Gary Quinlan</a>. You can follow every statement and moment using the #OzPrez hashtag, an amazing innovation of Australian e-diplomacy. </p>
<p>November is the Diplomacy Olympics, and this is the decathlon event. For film buffs, it is “The Year My Voice Broke”. We need Mr Abbott, Ms Bishop, Mr Robb and Mr Hockey on the podium at the end of this month.</p>
<h2>The report card</h2>
<p>So how did we go in the G20, in projecting our soft power? Brisbane was beautiful but boiling hot. The police were friendly, the locals were mostly bemused or strategically absent. The protests were creative, passionate and peaceful. The journos were fed and watered in a cavernous space, with complaints mostly about wi-fi, blocks to entering the building and the cash bar.</p>
<p>The leaders all came, except Argentina’s President Kirchner who was ill. Debutantes Indian PM Modi and Indonesian President <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/special_reports/opportunityasia/jokowi_big_week_of_overseas_meetings_kIrrinGRu7sL9drWZipYzH">Widodo</a> had a wonderful summit, charming most and in Modi’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/14/narendra-modi-from-international-pariah-to-the-g20s-political-rock-star">case</a>, hugging <a href="http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/hugs-and-handshakes-pm-narendra-modi-much-sought-after-at-g20-621286">many</a>. </p>
<p>The program mostly worked, in that a Leaders’ Declaration on Ebola was <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/g20_leaders_brisbane_statement_ebola.pdf">agreed</a> and a final <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/brisbane_g20_leaders_summit_communique.pdf">communique</a> was released. This included substantial and specific policies and goals designed to boost the G20 as a forum that <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/11/16/Brisbane-G20-summit-success-despite-Australias-climate-misstep.aspx">gets things done</a>. The precedent of the Ebola declaration is still something for global governance experts to debate.</p>
<p>Mr Abbott began the program with a leaders’ retreat, with no officials but the remarks televised. It was widely reported that Abbott’s remarks <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/special_reports/opportunityasia/jokowi_big_week_of_overseas_meetings_kIrrinGRu7sL9drWZipYzH">missed the mark</a> in both tone and appropriateness for the occasion. President Obama’s UQ <a href="https://theconversation.com/and-speaking-of-china-obamas-hope-for-asia-34274">remarks</a> directly followed and, for most analysts, comparisons were odious. </p>
<p>As a host, there was no criticism, except for rather terrified faces on some of the spouses when wild animals (and reptiles) were thrust their way at Lone Pine during the spouse program. And there was a barbecue where leaders must have felt slowly roasted themselves.</p>
<p>Mr Abbott’s performance improved over the two days. The closing presser was nearly an hour late and unfortunately lost much of the international press, but was a good speech, well delivered. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“I want to stress that this year the G20 has delivered real, practical outcomes and because of the efforts that the G20 has made this year, culminating in the last 48 hours, people right around the world are going to be better off and that’s what it’s all about: it is all about the people of the world being better off through the achievement of inclusive growth and jobs. That’s what it’s all about.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was plenty to like in the communique, especially the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-joe-hockey-and-the-g20-need-women-onside-33134">pledge</a> to create 100 million new jobs for women by 2025. But the world media focused on the <a href="https://theconversation.com/g20-summit-successful-but-untidy-for-abbott-34282">fight</a> over the climate paragraph. In our own summit, Australia lost control of the headline, and we have only ourselves to blame. Mr Abbott and Mr Hockey, by their own admission, listened so hard to the B20 and so little to the wider mainstream international foreign policy debates that they were wrong-footed on climate, science and innovation. </p>
<h2>Missed opportunities</h2>
<p>Why invite mainly business leaders, mainly men (with the exception of Gina Rinehart), to the leaders’ reception? Why give Rupert Murdoch the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/rupert-murdoch-lambasts-central-bank-stimulus-20141017-117eyu.html">spotlight</a> in Washington? Why not invite some of our artists, writers and thinkers and showcase that we are not just open for business but open to ideas? </p>
<p>Alas, that is twice we have lost the press of our troika partners (Russia and Turkey, and now China). We have to work hard with Turkey and China to maintain the legacy of Brisbane, especially as Turkey has outlined very different <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2014/11/14/Turkey-sets-its-G20-agenda-for-2015.aspx?COLLCC=4277532138&">priorities</a> for Antalya on November 15-16 2015, and China in 2016 is yet to declare its focus. </p>
<p>But the weekend belonged to the marsupials. Diplomacy scholars have long documented the effectiveness of China’s “<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/21/china-malaysia-and-the-weird-world-of-panda-diplomacy/">panda diplomacy</a>”. This weekend, we assuredly saw the rise of koala diplomacy. The jaded journos in the international media centre stampeded to meet Jimbelung, which means “friend” in a local Aboriginal dialect, who is scheduled to move from a wildlife park in Brisbane to Japan as a gift. </p>
<p>Most of the world leaders were captured hugging away, even those who had threatened each other verbally weeks and days before. The White House made a dad pun that got 70,000 likes and rising. US and Chinese media ignored the policies and <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/11/17/jimbelung-koala-may-be-g20-star">loved</a> the wildlife. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"533768927482896384"}"></div></p>
<p>Most Australians were watching and wondering when the koalas would turn on their usual tricks of relieving themselves and swiping someone in their normal drunk, grumpy manner. But no. These koalas were resolutely adorable, had obviously had a shampoo and a blow-dry, and didn’t complain even when security-screened (yes, security-screened).</p>
<p>So I’ll be donating to the <a href="https://www.savethekoala.com/">Australian Koala Foundation</a> this week, and I predict most of DFAT will too. Our koala diplomacy is on the rise. Let’s be memorable for more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34147/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Think20 process hosted by the Lowy Institute.</span></em></p>Never before has Australia been more at the heart of global affairs. Here in Brisbane we have finished our year as G20 President, with the G20 leaders presenting their communiqué. A series of significant…Susan Harris Rimmer, Director of Studies, Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342372014-11-16T19:21:17Z2014-11-16T19:21:17ZG20 tax reform plan should prevent another Lux leaks<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64642/original/qqd36xbs-1416132183.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">OECD Centre for Tax Policy and Administration Director Pascal Saint-Amans has been leading the charge against tax avoidance.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dominika Lis/G20 Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The G20 Communique is good news on the international tax reform front. As part of the G20 commitment to boost economic resilience the Communique commits G20 nations to taking action to ensure fairness in the international tax system. This means they are looking at ways to ensure profits are taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created. </p>
<p>The most positive statement is the endorsement of the global Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of information between revenue authorities. The G20 also provides strong support for the recommendations coming out of the OECD project on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). And so it should. </p>
<p>The reform program is ambitious and not yet finished but the G20 has committed to continuing the reform program in 2015. As such, the tax scandals we have seen recently coming out of <a href="https://theconversation.com/luxembourg-leaks-how-harmful-tax-competition-leads-to-profit-shifting-33940">“Lux leaks”</a> as well as multinationals such as Apple, Google and Starbucks being named as engaging in highly aggressive tax planning strategies will hopefully become a thing of the past.</p>
<p>Despite the ongoing nature of the OECD BEPS project we have broad agreement from the world’s largest economies on what are complex and multifaceted problems. Developing nations will also be pleased to see a commitment to deeper engagement with them to address their concerns.</p>
<p>There is a great deal of work still to be done and it would be easy to argue that the OECD has not gone far enough in its proposal for reform, but now is not the time to do so. Now is the time to take a breath and reflect on achievements to date. These achievements, reflecting a half-way point in the reform program for the OECD are significant. It is also time to consider the next step for nations which have endorsed the OECD recommendations. </p>
<p>The high level support requires action at a domestic level. Top down political support is apparent but that needs to translate into action. The political will must exist if outputs are to be realised in a practical sense. Governments are going to continue to be lobbied by those with vested interests. Some groups and authors suggest multinationals are doing nothing wrong, while others suggest there are no solutions to a broken tax system. Clearly, the G20 leaders do not agree and these voices are likely to become less vocal. </p>
<h2>Government action must be coordinated</h2>
<p>Governments must act but need to do so in concert with other governments. A coordinated effort is needed and this is not lost on the OECD. Here we are already seeing cracks appear with some too slow, others too fast and some just not wanting to play. </p>
<p>Australia was slow to agree to endorse the Common Reporting Standard for the automatic exchange of information. Fortunately it has now done so. Other nations are potentially too keen. On Friday Pascal Saint-Amans, Head of the Centre for Tax Policy at the OECD, raised concerns about too much momentum. As he said, unilateral action may lead to chaos. </p>
<p>Mexico is one such example of a nation keen to enact new laws to curb BEPS. In fact, it did so earlier this year. </p>
<p>India is also a good example of a nation not liking some of the recommendations. It has made it clear it is opposed to the proposal to make arbitration binding and mandatory under the mutual agreement procedure (MAP) to resolve disputes in tax treaties. India argues such a requirement will impinge on its sovereign rights. </p>
<p>Despite the need for domestic legislation to introduce new rules, the OECD reform program is about nations agreeing to common rules. However, nations have options: agree to the common rules or act unilaterally. The latter would be less than satisfactory as tax evasion is a global problem that must be addressed with global solutions. In fact, as we have seen recently with the Lux leaks scandal, often it’s because nations act unilaterally that base erosion is occurring. </p>
<p>We are yet to see whether Jean-Claude Juncker, current European Commission President, and previous Prime Minister of Luxembourg views tax avoidance in the same way as other nations or sees it as an important issue. On Saturday he said that he is in favour of tax competition as long as it is “fair” tax competition in Europe. </p>
<p>It is easy to blame multinationals, and no doubt, they deserve some of the blame. But once the behaviour of the multinationals is addressed, it is necessary to look at what nations themselves are doing. Nations offer tax incentives to attract investment. The question becomes one of when do such incentives constitute legitimate tax competition and when do they constitute harmful tax practices. Patent boxes, or the preferential tax treatment of intellectual property is one such area of dispute amongst countries. </p>
<p>As I said, the G20 is supporting an ambitious tax reform program by the OECD so this is a “good news” story for the international community. Now we need to keep up the momentum.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34237/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kerrie Sadiq receives funding from the International Centre for Tax and Development. She is a Senior Adviser to the Tax Justice Network (UK).</span></em></p>The G20 Communique is good news on the international tax reform front. As part of the G20 commitment to boost economic resilience the Communique commits G20 nations to taking action to ensure fairness…Kerrie Sadiq, Professor of Taxation, QUT Business School, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342762014-11-16T19:21:03Z2014-11-16T19:21:03ZThe other gender equality gap Australia needs to talk about<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64629/original/y5rqbtk4-1416029461.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The B20, charged with representing the interests of the wealthy international business community, has low female representation.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The G20 leaders have committed to reduce the gap between male and female workforce participation rates by 25% by 2025.</p>
<p>The gender equality focus by many of the leaders during the summit, including UN Secretry-General Ban Ki Moon, aims to leverage the economic contribution women have to make in promoting global growth. A joint report for the G20 summit by the world’s economic heavyweights, the OECD, ILO, World Bank and IMF, argued that economic growth and welfare can be fostered by increased female labour force participation.</p>
<p>Their report also asserted that the elimination of gender gaps in economic empowerment will require action that addresses discriminatory gender wage gaps and the high rates of part-time, low-paid and vulnerable work amongst women.</p>
<p>Action on the gender wealth gap should be added to this list of priorities. The distribution of wealth describes the accumulation of economic inequality over the life course much better than the distribution of income. Yet, despite significant attention being paid to the gender pay gap, we know surprisingly little about its counterpart, the gender wealth gap. </p>
<p>Data from the nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey reveals some startling patterns and trends that cannot be ignored. In 2010, single men’s wealth was on average 23% higher than single women’s wealth holdings. This is a doubling of the gender wealth gap since 2002, when it was 10%. In both years the gender wealth gap was driven by gender differences at the upper end of the distribution. About 40% of households have little or no wealth. However, in 2010, single female households in the top-quartile of the wealth distribution achieved, on average, a net worth of A$814,900 while single males in the top quartile had wealth of close to A$1 million.</p>
<h2>Perplexing patterns</h2>
<p>Curiously, despite historically high rates of female labour force participation in recent decades, the gender wealth gap has widened more among singles aged 25 to 55 than among singles aged over 55 years. It is tempting to think that the gender wealth gap among single individuals reflects gender differences in human capital that affect the ability to accumulate wealth. Surprisingly, however, despite men possessing lower levels of education than women, single men are amassing more wealth than their female counterparts. More generally, a large gender wealth gap persists even when differences in human capital are taken into account. Working age single women today appear to be more exposed to the double perils of income and asset poverty than men.</p>
<p>In terms of asset composition, single women are much more reliant on the primary home as a source of wealth than single men. Yet, single men have enjoyed a surge in the value of their property assets that has exceeded the real increases in the value of the housing assets controlled by single women. The relatively large increase in the value of real estate held by single men was the key driver of the rapidly widening gender wealth gap between 2002 and 2010. Paradoxically, while single women have more of their wealth in housing, it is single males who appear to own real estate that appreciates more quickly. This likely reflects differences in the type of real estate that single men and women invest in. It is possible that single women’s housing choices are constrained by the larger roles they play in caring for young children.</p>
<h2>Completing the puzzle</h2>
<p>It is over 130 years since married women first secured property rights in Australia, but we still know very little about the gender wealth gap. </p>
<p>While our findings on the gender wealth gap among Australian singles have some interesting aspects, most adults live in couple households and we know relatively little about the gender wealth gap for this part of the population. This is an important omission from our knowledge of wealth for a number of reasons. Firstly, men and women have different life expectancies and this can provide motivations for different savings and divestment strategies by men and women in the same household. Secondly, there is little evidence to suggest that households share their resources equally or equitably. Higher incomes are associated with greater decision-making power and access to resources within households. More generally, the majority of age pensioners are women. In a country with an ageing demographic profile, women’s capacity to accumulate wealth has broad economic and social implications.</p>
<h2>Resizing the gap – what’s required</h2>
<p>Overall, we need to piece together a comprehensive picture of the distribution of wealth in Australia and the factors which facilitate or impede its accumulation. In particular, we need to understand whether women’s increasing workforce participation and decades of gender equity policy are having a discernible influence on the gendered distribution of wealth. Initial findings are baffling. While the gender pay gap has remained remarkably stable in the last decade, the wealth gap between men and women is large and has widened in the last decade.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34276/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rachel Ong is affiliated with the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, which is an independent economic and social research organisation located within Curtin Business School at Curtin University. The Centre was established in 2012 with support from Bankwest (a division of Commonwealth Bank of Australia) and Curtin University. The views in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views of Curtin University and/or Bankwest or any of their affiliates.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Therese Jefferson receives funding from The Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sherry Bawa and Siobhan Austen do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The G20 leaders have committed to reduce the gap between male and female workforce participation rates by 25% by 2025. The gender equality focus by many of the leaders during the summit, including UN Secretry-General…Siobhan Austen, Associate Professor, School of Economics & Finance, Curtin UniversityRachel Ong ViforJ, Principal Research Fellow, Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, Curtin UniversitySherry Bawa, Lecturer, Curtin UniversityTherese Jefferson, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Business, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342822014-11-16T13:45:10Z2014-11-16T13:45:10ZG20 summit successful but untidy for Abbott<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64645/original/kbgbb7z8-1416142827.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott and Vladimir Putin cuddle up to koalas.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Andrew Taylor, G20 Australia</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tony Abbott always said he wanted the Brisbane G20 to come up with practical actions and a communique of no more than three pages.</p>
<p>He achieved both objectives – although the communique had a mass of attached documents. </p>
<p>Notably, the leaders have endorsed reform plans aimed at significantly lifting global growth (by 2.1%) over the next five years above what it would have been.</p>
<p>But the G20 was untidier for Abbott than desirably it should have been. The climate issue forced its way centre stage despite the government’s best efforts to keep it marginalised. </p>
<p>If the government had been more flexible, less ideological, it could have been a different story. </p>
<p>Circumstances came together to run the government over on the climate debate. US president Obama is determined to make it a legacy mission. China is looking to its longer term emissions. Various countries are starting to consider their positions for the Paris climate conference late next year. </p>
<p>Last week’s United States-China agreement on post-2020 emissions created a momentum that would inevitably flow like a tidal wave to the Brisbane meeting. If there was ever any doubt, Obama made sure of that with his forceful speech at the University of Queensland.</p>
<p>Obama might be unpopular at home but he wowed his audience, which included many students. He backed his rhetoric with money – US$3 billion for the Green Climate Fund (GCF). </p>
<p>The Australian government was unable and unwilling to go with the flow. </p>
<p>On the one hand, it insisted there was nothing new to see, that climate was always set to be discussed – it was in the original draft of the communique Australia had circulated. On the other hand, Abbott was vigorous in his defence of coal while treasurer Joe Hockey said that “ultimately, the only way anyone can pay for all the initiatives you need to deal with climate change is to have money in the bank, and governments can only have money if they’ve got prosperous economies and it comes back to the focus on growth and jobs”. </p>
<p>The communique said that countries which were ready to communicate their post-2020 targets for the Paris conference should do so in the first quarter of next year. It reaffirmed the G20’s support for mobilising finance for adaptation and mitigation, such as through the GCF. </p>
<p>But Abbott – critical in the past of the GCF – would not commit at his post-summit news conference to allocating dollars to it. He also has wriggle room on the timing of Australia producing the post-2020 target – the government is anxious to see the targets of a range of other countries.</p>
<p>Australia has no good policy rationale for leaving itself so vulnerable in the international climate debate. If critics have an argument that Kevin Rudd wanted to take Australia too far out in front, there is little doubt that Abbott is holding Australia too far at the back of the international pack. </p>
<p>Abbott was assisted politically in opposition when climate change receded as an issue under the pressure of the global financial crisis and after the failure of Copenhagen. </p>
<p>In a Coalition where there are many climate sceptics, there is neither the will nor the dexterity for the government to move to meet changing circumstances. So next year it could be as challenging for Australia on the climate front as the G20 has been. </p>
<p>The tests in other areas – growth targets and countries’ individual action plans – will come in the longer term. The various initiatives will be monitored, but countries’ undertakings can’t be enforced. Even Australia is unable to guarantee that it will meet the pledges it has made, which include budget items facing opposition in the Senate. </p>
<p>Still, if the action plans give some help to global growth, the Brisbane meeting will have brought benefits. The perfect should not be made the enemy of the good. The same is true of the commitment to increase women’s participation in workforces. </p>
<p>On tax avoidance, financial issues and trade there were positive steps – it is too early to judge how big some of those steps will be. </p>
<p>Vladimir Putin’s presence, which had hung heavily over the lead up to the summit, was in the end managed. Abbott, sensibly, had it out with Putin over MH17 on the margins of the APEC meeting. Abbott in Brisbane could leave it to other leaders, especially his mate, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, to strongly and personally register their opposition to what Russia has been doing in the Ukraine. </p>
<p>Abbott could act the polite host. Putin publicly had little but good to say about Abbott on this front. </p>
<p>Putin was pictured uncomfortably holding the obligatory koala, which made its own protest by trying to escape. The Russians denied a Saturday night suggestion that he was leaving early, but he certainly didn’t hang around longer than he had to.</p>
<p>The Russian president got the message that he was the most unpopular leader at the G20 party, but is unlikely to take it to heart. </p>
<p><strong><a href="http://michellegrattan.podbean.com/e/g20-leaders-summit-part-two/">Listen to part two of The Conversation’s podcast coverage of the event</a>.</strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34282/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tony Abbott always said he wanted the Brisbane G20 to come up with practical actions and a communique of no more than three pages. He achieved both objectives – although the communique had a mass of attached…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342802014-11-16T07:45:05Z2014-11-16T07:45:05ZG20 leaders agree US$2 trillion growth goal: experts react<p>The G20 leaders have reaffirmed a commitment to raise global growth, saying if more than 800 agreed measures are “fully implemented”, GDP will grow by an additional 2.1% by 2018, adding more than US$2 trillion and “millions of jobs” to the global economy.</p>
<p>Infrastructure and trade were the lead items in the <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/brisbane_g20_leaders_summit_communique.pdf">communique</a>, with support for a global infrastructure hub to be funded with both public and private money, and reforms to facilitate trade by “lowering costs, streamlining customs procedures, reducing regulatory burdens and strengthening trade-enabling services”.</p>
<p>The leaders also committed to reducing “unacceptably high” youth unemployment, pledging to invest in apprenticeships, education and training and incentives for hiring young people and encouraging entrepreneurship.</p>
<p>A surprise firm commitment to reduce the gender workforce participation gap by 25% by 2025 was also included, with the aim of bringing more than 100 million women into the labour force.</p>
<p>The leaders also endorsed the “bail in” work of the Financial Stability Board to help protect taxpayers in the event of a bank failure, and welcomed the progress of the OECD on multinational tax avoidance. “Profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created,” the leaders affirmed.</p>
<p>An anti-corruption action plan was also endorsed, which includes recovery of the proceeds of corruption and denial of safe haven to corrupt officials.</p>
<p>Climate change, which threatened to overshadow the broader growth agenda, was included in the communique, however it remains up to the United Nations to establish a protocol or other legal instrument for action. The leaders reaffirmed their commitment to phase out fossil fuel subsidies.</p>
<p>Our panel of experts responds below.</p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Richard Holden, Professor of Economics at UNSW Australia Business School</strong></p>
<p>The G20 have agreed on a range of measures intended to increase GDP by 2.1% more than it would otherwise be by 2018. It’s always hard to put precise numbers on the benefits of complex policies, but there was a lot to like in the G20 communique.</p>
<p>Importantly, there was discussion not just about the level of growth, but the stability of growth — something that the 2008 financial crisis reminded us cannot be take for granted. The endorsement of the Financial Stability Board’s so-called “bail in” proposal is particularly notable. This would help ensure the ongoing viability of financial institutions suffering a major shock, while making the equity holders and unsecured creditors, rather than governments, wear the losses. This, in turn, should reduce the kind of moral hazard that emanated from private profits but socialised losses.</p>
<p>The communique also addresses global profit shifting by large corporations, stating “profits should be taxed where economic activities deriving the profits are performed and where value is created”. Although this is easier said than done, international cooperation and information sharing is indispensable in preventing a race to the bottom, with countries lowering tax rates and offering special deals to attract corporations.</p>
<p>Also notable was the commitment to closing the gender gap in workforce participation by 25% by 2025. It will be interesting to see what specific policies are enacted to this end. One that should be first in line is to reduce the absurdly high effective marginal tax rates that women in the workforce often face because of reductions in child-care and other benefits, combined with income tax schedules. This is a huge barrier to participation and could easily be addressed.</p>
<p>*<em>Dr John Kirton, Co-director, G20 Research Group, University of Toronto
*</em></p>
<p>When it was proudly proclaimed in February (the growth target) was 2% above the base line then, that was 3.6% for the year we’re in now. Now we know what the real baseline is, it’s less, it’s 3.3%. The commitment was actually “more than 2%” and 2% is no longer good enough, so we need at least 2.3% and even that assumes 100% compliance in implementation…and you never get 100%.</p>
<p>On the other side of the agenda I was extremely encouraged by the Ebola statement, not just because it’s the first time the G20 has taken up global health governance. It really did prove that when leaders get along together you can throw away the narrow economic playbook and do bigger bolder things. </p>
<p>*<em>Tony Makin, Professor of Economics at Griffith University
*</em></p>
<p>In the five years before the 2008-09 North Atlantic crisis average world economic growth was around 5.0% per annum, but has since averaged 3.5%, and is likely to reach only 3.2% this year. The Brisbane Action Plan to lift world economic growth by over 2% in the next five years is therefore well-timed and laudable. The plan commits G20 economies to expanding production by close to a half a per cent higher per annum on average, exactly the amount Australia’s growth has to rise to return to its long term pre-crisis rate. </p>
<p>Bolstering world economic growth is critically important because it has been the single most important reason for freeing hundreds of millions of people from poverty in populous emerging G20 economies like China, India, Indonesia and Brazil. Pro-growth action is also needed to lower persistently high levels of unemployment in advanced economies, most notably amongst youth in Europe, and to push Australia’s unemployment rate back down below 6%. Higher growth is also important for maintaining living standards in economies with rapidly ageing populations. </p>
<p>Of course economic growth literally has to be fuelled and the associated environmental trade-off also has to be addressed, as it will be front and centre at next year’s G20 summit in Turkey. </p>
<p>What the best means to growth are is subject to often intense macroeconomic debate. In most basic terms, economic growth can be improved via policies that promote aggregate demand or spending, by policies that promote aggregate supply, or some combination of the two.<br>
The G20 heavily emphasised the former via fiscal stimulus when attempting to extinguish the firestorm generated by the North Atlantic banking crisis in 2008-09. However, for many economies including Australia, massive fiscal stimulus was the wrong type of extinguisher to use, like spraying water instead of foam on an electrical fire. The legacy of Australia’s fiscal stimulus is further discussed <a href="http://www.minerals.org.au/file_upload/files/publications/MCA_Monograph_No._6_Australia%E2%80%99s_Competitiveness_Reversing_the_Slide_by_Tony_Makin.pdf">here</a>. </p>
<p>The Brisbane Plan signifies a major sea change in macroeconomic policy thinking by the G20 for it shifts focus toward structural reform to raise economies’ productive potential. The key measures include hundreds of country specific measures, including promoting competition, enhancing international trade and boosting female workforce participation (critical for economies like Japan). </p>
<p>Quantifying how much the announced measures will actually contribute to global growth will however be a major challenge for IMF and OECD economists and involve much guesswork given the inherent noise in GDP measurement. </p>
<p>Infrastructure investment is also expected to contribute significantly to the 2%+ expansion of world growth. This is the most risky element of the package of measures announced. To the extent it gives licence to governments to spend on poorly chosen infrastructure projects, it signifies international policy recidivism since it would simply be unsound fiscal stimulus by another name. </p>
<p>*<em>Fabrizio Carmignani, Professor, Griffith Business School
*</em></p>
<p>The communique explicitly refers to inclusiveness. Prime Minister Abbott also explicitly referred to the notion of “inclusive” growth. This is certainly an important achievement: it means the leaders are aware growth in itself is a necessary, but not sufficient to generate development and improve living standards. However, the rhetoric of the communique (and of Mr Abbott in the press conference) seems to suggest the leaders equate inclusiveness to job creation. Certainly, to be inclusive, growth must be associated with a steady increase in employment. But it is not just that. Inclusive growth also means taking into account the needs of those who do not have a job or that are not looking for a job (e.g. the elders, youth in school age, the unemployed) through a solid system of social protection, the provision of public goods to guarantee equality of opportunities, and counter-cyclical macroeconomic policies to reduce volatility. Unfortunately, there is not much mention of these other aspects of inclusiveness in the communique.</p>
<p>As expected, the communique does not provide a blueprint for growth. In fact, I do not think that this was ever meant to be its scope. Even the Brisbane Action Plan (in spite of the opening headings) is not really a blueprint for growth in each country. It is instead a list of a few, generally sensible, issues relating to economic interdependencies and spillovers in the global economy. I do believe that it is important for the G20 to discuss and highlight such interdependencies in policy-making. Still, the design and implementation of a blueprint for growth is very much a national issue. Different strategies are required in different countries at different times. While some problems are common across countries, others are country-specific. For this reason, the G20 should have not dictated a “one-size-fits-all” approach to growth, but instead it should have provided direction, leadership in implementation, and – as noted – a thorough discussion on global interdependencies. I think that this has been achieved, even though I believe that too much faith is being placed in the communique (and in the rhetoric of the Australian government) on physical infrastructure development.</p>
<p>As I anticipated, not having climate change on the agenda did not mean environmental sustainability issues were not discussed. I am glad to read references to sustainable growth and development in the communique (and also in the press conference). I think, however, that the leaders should have more clearly emphasised the fact that there is no conflict between environmental sustainability and growth. Much of the thinking on this theme is still anchored to the view that growth requires some degree of environmental degradation or, alternatively, that environmental protection requires some form of de-growth. In fact, there should be no trade-off between sustainability and growth. The great potential for innovation today is in green technologies and we know that innovation is the key to long-term growth. So, growth objectives and policies do not need to be seen as a threat to the environment. I wish the communique had more explicitly made this fundamental point.</p>
<p><strong>AJ Brown, Professor of Public Policy & Law at Griffith University, Transparency International Australia board member, and <a href="https://www.g20.org/g20_priorities/working_partners/think_20_t20">T20</a> adviser to the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group.</strong></p>
<p>The G20 has maintained its credibility as a global governance body by tempering its economic growth mission with an ongoing commitment to fighting global corruption.</p>
<p>Corruption costs the world economy, and all the people it affects. A decade ago, one World Bank estimate put the global cost of corruption at $1 trillion per annum. More recently, the OECD suggested that if corruption were an industry, it would be the world’s third largest, now worth more than $3 trillion and 5% of global GDP. Indeed, “corruption kills”, as Elena Panfilova, head of Transparency International Russia, told a key international conference on anti-corruption and the G20 in Brisbane in June, in the lead up to November 2014 G20 leaders’ summit.</p>
<p>However even though there is some real progress on key anti-corruption issues, and this is thanks to Australian government leadership, there are also signs that it continues to be dealt with as something of a token problem rather than being fully integrated into the G20 agenda.</p>
<p>The G20’s adoption of new high level principles on beneficial ownership – identifying the real owners of the ‘shell’ companies routinely used to hide corruption and evade tax – is a real step forward. US President Barak Obama even made direct reference to the importance of this breakthrough, in his final press conference after the conclusion of the summit.</p>
<p>However, now the questions start about how this commitment is really going to be implemented. Most if not all G20 countries are already subject to international Financial Action Task Force commitments to require this information to be kept and shared, and yet most have not been implementing them. The United States is the most problematic example, with states like Delaware still specialising in selling totally anonymous companies to those who want them, around the world.</p>
<p>Similar questions surround the accountability of G20 countries for their progress on other issues, which is routinely self-reported as high. Even though progress is being made on issues, the reality on many indicators is that is not as spectacular as the diplomo-speak would have everyone believe. And this is true even of Australia’s own self-reporting of its progress.</p>
<p>Another sign of the tensions lie in the decision of G20 leaders today to establish a new four-year G20 <a href="https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/g20_note_global_infrastructure_initiative_hub.pdf">Global Infrastructure Initiative</a>, chaired by Australia, but despite the focus on kick-starting major new infrastructure, there is no direct reference in the four-page initiative to managing the corruption risks of this exercise, apart from short reference to “best practice procurement” processes and the need to manage any conflicts of interest among the companies who may contribute to the fund.</p>
<p>In the long-term, the effectiveness of the G20 relies on its credibility. On anti-corruption issues, that credibility has been maintained for now, but it is clearly going to take a lot more work, including by Australia, for it to be sustained in the long term.</p>
<p><strong>Ross Guest, Professor of Economics and National Senior Teaching Fellow at Griffith University</strong></p>
<p>The commitment to freeing up international trade is by far the most important outcome of the G20 summit. Forget the nonsense about growth targets - they are largely beyond the control of governments. And the infrastructure hub is over-hyped and should make any taxpayer nervous. Governments love infrastructure - tangible transport links, ports and so on play well to the voters especially in marginal electorates. But they must come with rigorous prior cost-benefit tests, otherwise it’s taxpayer dollars down the drain. There must be no more of the talk that came with the NBN: “This is visionary, huge, wonderful and far too complex to be subject to cost-benefit analysis - we’ll just do it!” Governments must demonstrate that the resources cannot be put to better alternative use - either in the private or public sectors - otherwise we are all worse off.</p>
<p>Freeing up international trade does not require higher taxes or more government spending - it just requires less barriers to imports which usually come in the form of contrived regulations on standards, or old-fashioned quotas and import taxes. With lower barriers to imports we get better and cheaper goods and services, more competition which drives efficiency, and incentives to invest in our most productive sectors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34280/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
The G20 leaders have reaffirmed a commitment to raise global growth, saying if more than 800 agreed measures are “fully implemented”, GDP will grow by an additional 2.1% by 2018, adding more than US$2…Charis Palmer, Deputy Editor/Chief of StaffLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342502014-11-16T04:42:14Z2014-11-16T04:42:14ZGeoff Harcourt: climate challenge calls for a rethink of economics<p>Focusing on growth, the Brisbane G20 leaders’ summit has not grappled with three key issues. How much more growth can the planet survive? How can poorer nations raise their living standards to parity with the “developed” world? And within both rich and poor countries, how can a fairer distribution of the benefits of growth be realised?</p>
<p>The key problem of our time is the possibility of pursuing three goals simultaneously - ecological sustainability, economic development and a more equitable distribution of wealth within and among nations.</p>
<p>Harvard economist Steven Marglin <a href="http://scholar.harvard.edu/marglin/publications">argues</a> affluent nations must limit further increases in their standard of living. Priority must be given to the development goals of poorer nations and to addressing poverty in the affluent world. But even this cannot be done within current wasteful approaches to growth. A radical rethink of the foundations of economics is required.</p>
<p>Six economists and sociologists from Cambridge, the Hague, India, Italy and Australia <a href="http://elr.sagepub.com/content/early/recent">debate this challenge</a> in the December 2014 issue of The Economic and Labour Relations Review.</p>
<h2>Back to basics - a new economics?</h2>
<p>Macquarie economist <a href="http://www.businessandeconomics.mq.edu.au/contact_the_faculty/all_fbe_staff/wylie_bradford">Wylie Bradford</a> questions the need for a root and branch alternative to mainstream economics. He argues existing theory is soundly based in a view of humanity and nature that has continually been adapted since the ancient Greeks. Bradford argues it can be adapted further to address the present circumstances.</p>
<p>Conversely, <a href="http://cambridge.academia.edu/ShachiAmdekar">Shachi Amdekar</a> and Emeritus Professor <a href="http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/people/crsid.html?crsid=as14&group=emeritus">Ajit Singh</a> from Cambridge University UK argue global warming mandates a new starting point for economics. The conventional self-interested individual is no basis for conceptualising what’s needed to tackle the terrible threats to human survival resulting from modern economic processes. </p>
<h2>New models for rich and poor</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.iss.nl/iss_faculty/profiel_metis/1100530/">Andrew Fischer</a>, from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, says poor nations can develop, even while the world economy decarbonises. </p>
<p>Poorer nations need to accumulate capital to reduce poverty, and Fischer explores how the “developed” world can make environmentally-friendly changes in the composition of its consumption expenditure, to maintain effective demand in the world as a whole.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.eui.eu/DepartmentsAndCentres/PoliticalAndSocialSciences/People/Professors/Bartolini.aspx">Stefano Bartolini</a>, from Siena University, provides empirical evidence that declining social capital underlies rich nations’ current unsustainable economic growth. He paints a picture of isolated people in gated communities, protected by security systems, spending their leisure on over-consumption.</p>
<p>Bartolini provides alternative models of institutions, cities, social spaces and lifestyles, reversing the trend decline in social capital, creating benefits for both human well-being and the environment.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.egs3h.eur.nl/people/w-harcourt/">Wendy Harcourt,</a> from Erasmus University, provides examples of academics and grass roots activists changing the ways in which communities function, building links between neighbourhoods in rich and poor countries and regions. She outlines a new community economics, based on “meshworks” - loosely connected networks of learning.</p>
<p>In response to the United Nations call for post-Millennium Development Goals Emeritus Professor <a href="http://www.idsk.edu.in/faculty.php?id=3">Amiya Bagchi</a> of Kolkata Institute of Development Studies proposed the following:</p>
<p>1) More effective regulation of global capital, through host country requirements for local procurement and utilisation of innovations; more effective regulation of pharmaceutical patents; and closure of tax havens</p>
<p>2) Stronger environmental protection through restriction of environmentally risky oil and mineral exploration and more public funding for research and investment in renewable resources and organic farming</p>
<p>3) Inter-regional measures such as a global fund to support the viability of small island nations; and enforceable international conventions on asylum seekers, with maltreatment of migrants justiciable in international courts</p>
<p>4) Intra-country redistribution through legislated minimum wages; gender equality in education and health care; pro-peasant land reforms, recognising women’s agrarian role; and communal models of property rights for forest-using people.</p>
<p>Whether or not economic theory moves beyond the utility-maximising individual, the survival of the planet is likely to depend on a new growth model based on social cohesion. The blueprints exist: the planetary risk may galvanise their adoption.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34250/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Junor is Editor in Chief of The Economic and Labour Relations Review, a journal published by Sage Publishing under an agreement with the Business School UNSW Australia. A Senior Visiting Fellow in the Industrial Relations Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, she is Chief Investigator on two projects funded by Australian Research Council Linkage Grants, due to finish in 2014 and 2015, on topics unrelated to this article </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Geoff Harcourt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Focusing on growth, the Brisbane G20 leaders’ summit has not grappled with three key issues. How much more growth can the planet survive? How can poorer nations raise their living standards to parity with…Geoff Harcourt, Visiting Professorial Fellow, UNSW SydneyAnne Junor, Deputy Director Industrial Relations Research Centre, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342742014-11-15T09:09:49Z2014-11-15T09:09:49Z‘And speaking of China…’ Obama’s hope for Asia<p>US President Barack Obama took to the stage at the University of Queensland in Brisbane on a day which had the soles of your shoes melting. </p>
<p>We had been through a complicated but reasonable security process. Most of the 2500 odd people in the room were young and starstruck. Many of the mingling Australian VIPs were similarly starstruck. </p>
<p>It was a clever mix of audience, demonstrating the strength and depth of the US Embassy in understanding Australia’s influencer networks. The crowd included students and scientists, academics, politicians, and business leaders at every level. The focus was on the future - innovation, youth and knowledge. Bruce Springsteen sang The Rising and the people were ready to be inspired. </p>
<p>Obama’s opening location gags were of a standard that would leave Adam Hills green with envy. But then he got to the serious issues, using the perfect frame of a David Malouf <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/lecture-2-a-complex-fate/3460262">quote</a> from his beautiful Boyer Lectures.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>In that shrinking of distance that is characteristic of our contemporary world, even the Pacific, largest of oceans, has become a lake.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Malouf was talking about American identity and values at key historical moments of transition. Obama hit all the signature tenets of US public diplomacy and foreign policy - freedom of speech and internet freedom, democratic values, gender equality, minority rights, rights for LGBTI persons. </p>
<p>This was a crucial moment for global governance and for nowhere more than our region. In his first term, the President made a strategic decision to increase the United States’ focus on the Asia-Pacific region by “rebalancing” US engagements, activities, and resources toward our region (originally known as “the pivot to Asia”). </p>
<p>Obama referred back to his 2011 <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/11/17/remarks-president-obama-australian-parliament">speech</a> before the Commonwealth Parliament:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future, by upholding core principles and in close partnership with our allies and friends. Our approach is grounded in the proposition that the United States is a historic Pacific power whose economy, strength, and interests are inextricably linked with Asia’s economic, security, and political order…and we are here to stay.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Visibly this meant the shift of military assets - by the end of this decade, a majority of US Navy and Air Force fleets will be based out of the Pacific. Beyond military strategy, US foreign policy and economic diplomacy needs to focus more keenly on the Asia-Pacific region.</p>
<p>It is this staying power that has been questioned, especially considering the result of the mid-terms. Obama tackled the unspoken question directly and with vigour, and sounded reasonably convincing even as troops are committed to Iraq once more and Washington’s gaze remains firmly on the Middle East and Ukraine. But he also said “the US is the only superpower” and that statement is open to interrogation with the rise of China. In global governance terms - this was the million dollar question:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And speaking of China, the US will continue to pursue a constructive relationship with China. By virtue of its size and its remarkable growth, China will inevitably play a critical role in the future of this region and the question is what kind of role will it play?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There was a harder edge to Obama’s words at this point of the speech. </p>
<p>“We are also encouraging China to adhere to the same rules as other nations, whether in trade or on the seas,” he said, leaning in to the students in the front row. “We do not benefit from a relationship with China or any other country in which we put our values and our ideals aside.”</p>
<p>Much of these tensions play out in the economic arena central to the G20 - Chinese currency issues, US Congress blocking IMF voting reforms, the US creating a regional trade deal that excludes China in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The TPP reference was probably the most controversial paragraph of the speech - with Twitter lighting up against the idea that the secretive TPP promotes transparency.</p>
<p>“We’re pushing new standards in this trade agreement requiring countries that participate to protect their workers better and to protect the environment better and protect intellectual property that unleashes innovation and meet baseline standards to ensure transparency and rule of law.”</p>
<p>But the tone in the climate section of the speech, the part that will lead the news bulletins and got the cheers, was so positive. “And if China and the US can agree on this, then the world can agree on this, we can get this done and it is necessary for us to get it done.” As a statement about global governance, it is a hopeful statement for a troubled region. Obama is still - less shiny, more rumpled - but still, all about hope. </p>
<p>Rory Medcalfe, my fellow UQ alumni, gave the speech a <a href="http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/?COLLCC=255028595&">grading</a>, writing in the Interpreter:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>On Asia, this speech scores a credit – solid and respectable, but not spectacular. It won’t go down in history as the speech that categorically revitalized the rebalance. But at least it held the line.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>We need to hear the bookend speech to the Australian Parliament by Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday and calibrate the two statements of vision. But for me, I give the speech a solid ‘A’. This latest statement finally made the rebalance policy feel less a security framework and more a holistic shift of focus towards our region. How will these values be realised in our region - dignity, choice, gender equality and human rights? We need to build our interconnectedness around that lake.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34274/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Think20 process hosted by the Lowy Institute.</span></em></p>US President Barack Obama took to the stage at the University of Queensland in Brisbane on a day which had the soles of your shoes melting. We had been through a complicated but reasonable security process…Susan Harris Rimmer, Director of Studies, Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342792014-11-15T09:00:23Z2014-11-15T09:00:23ZAbbott buffeted by the winds of climate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64630/original/7pptcpz7-1416032605.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">So we meet again: Tony Abbott and Vladimir Putin cope with an awkward moment. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When G20 leaders gathered for their “retreat” at Queensland’s Parliament House, they heard more about the Abbott government’s budgetary travails than they might have expected or wanted, even in a session on “the politics of economic reform”.</p>
<p>Tony Abbott didn’t hold back in sharing his pain.</p>
<p>After exhorting leaders to speak from the “heart”, he declared that trying to get the budget under control “has proven massively difficult”.</p>
<p>Deregulating university fees had run into the problem that “students never like to pay more”. And injecting a price signal into the health system had proved “very, very difficult”. </p>
<p>“We would like to see a $7 co-payment for people who are going to see the doctor. In most countries this is standard, that the doctor can charge a fee, but it is proving to be massively difficult to get this particular reform through the parliament,” Abbott said. </p>
<p>He added: “I don’t have any magic answers to the problems that we face”. </p>
<p>Opposition leader Bill Shorten later described his speech as “weird and graceless”. Shorten might have been remembering that in January, addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos on this year’s G20, Abbott had taken a direct swipe at the former Labor government’s high spending, saying that “governments can be like addicts in search of a fix”. </p>
<p>Abbott also gave the leaders his usual spiel about the government’s commitments, including repealing the carbon tax and stopping the boats, which “have, thank god, stopped”. That might have been better left for another time, given the presence of Indonesia’s new president Joko Widodo and the sensitivity of Indonesia on that issue. </p>
<p>Abbott’s horizon was narrow rather than broad in this setting amid the world’s most important leaders. But then the first day of the G20 has seen Abbott appear out of international sync. </p>
<p>According to the summary his office issued, the retreat discussion focused on the government’s priorities of jobs and growth. The leaders agreed that “we are all grappling with the inherent tension between policy and politics” and “we need to have a clear vision about where we want to go and then build consensus”. </p>
<p>They agreed they needed a “strong reform narrative” and “must seize the moment – get onto necessary reforms quickly”. </p>
<p>Priorities for reform included favouring “labour market outsiders over insiders”, the future over the present, particularly on infrastructure, and “what works and experience over ideology”.</p>
<p>But in the wider context Abbott has been mugged by the issue he wanted to marginalise – climate change. </p>
<p>It was a central theme of Barack Obama’s address at the University of Queensland. Not only did Obama talk up the importance of the agreement that he and Chinese president Xi Jinping reached this week on post-2020 action, and announce US$3 billion for the Green Climate Fund to help developing countries, he took clear aim at the Abbott government, declaring the Great Barrier Reef under threat and exhorting Australia to act so that it would be there for his future grandchildren to visit.</p>
<p>It’s as though two agendas are being run in Brisbane this weekend.</p>
<p>One is the growth and jobs agenda, to which everybody subscribes although UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon sounded a warning that “the quality of growth is just as important as is the quantity”.</p>
<p>The other agenda includes climate and Ebola – items many of the leaders think important for this forum, but ones that the Australian government would prefer not get the headlines.</p>
<p>Late on Saturday, the G20 leaders issued the “Brisbane Statement on Ebola”. This said G20 members “are committed to do what is necessary to ensure the international effort can extinguish the outbreak and address its medium term economic and humanitarian costs”.</p>
<p>Abbott has previously won some plaudits for his performance on international issues. But in this setting, so far, he is looking less than impressive – excessively determined to do things his way and not willing enough to accommodate the preoccupations and priorities of others. </p>
<p><strong>Listen to our <a href="http://michellegrattan.podbean.com/e/g20-leaders-summit/">G20 podcast here</a>.</strong></p>
<iframe src="https://www.podbean.com/media/player/audio/postId/5372717/url/http%253A%252F%252Fmichellegrattan.podbean.com%252Fe%252Fg20-leaders-summit%252F/initByJs/1/auto/1" width="100%" height="100" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34279/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
When G20 leaders gathered for their “retreat” at Queensland’s Parliament House, they heard more about the Abbott government’s budgetary travails than they might have expected or wanted, even in a session…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342042014-11-15T02:05:11Z2014-11-15T02:05:11ZTo get climate change under control, our growth fetish must go<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64542/original/xc3w8phm-1415933923.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Economic growth is a significant contributor to the climate change crisis</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">www.shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/world/asia/china-us-xi-obama-apec.html">US-China climate announcement</a> is a significant development in humanity’s equivocal response to the climate crisis. Despite over four decades of political engagement with climate change, tangible action has remained limited to rhetorical flourishes by politicians against a background of greater fossil fuel exploitation. So the announcement by the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters that they will commit to reducing emissions is welcome news. </p>
<p>Yet <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/11/12/big-uschina-climate-deal-what-it-and-what-it-isnt">the targets themselves</a> are not sufficient to meet the politically agreed two-degree warming limit. The announcement, coming just days before the start of the G20 talks in Brisbane, highlights a fundamental contradiction at the heart of climate negotiations. This is the tension between commitments to avert climate catastrophe and those to increase global economic growth.</p>
<p>In the lead-up to the G20 talks, there has been little doubt about <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-12/jericho-g20-to-follow-the-long-tradition-of-climate-inaction/5882240">Australia’s agenda</a>. Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have been adamant in their emphasis on the need for <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2014-01-23/address-world-economic-forum-davos-switzerland-0">greater global economic growth</a>. It is rare, if not impossible, to find anyone in the mainstream public debate who questions the wisdom of ever-increasing economic growth. </p>
<p>Yet there is a major underlying problem in our collective worship and addiction to growth – climate change. Economic growth, rising affluence and a growing world population are the major contributors to the current environmental crisis. Despite four decades of political discussion about the urgency of climate change, rising emission levels have only paused during periods of <a href="http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/12/how_the_financial_crisis_barel.html">economic recession</a>.</p>
<p>Compound economic growth is at the heart of our environmental impact. Climate change, ocean acidification, species extinctions, the depletion of the phosphorus and nitrogen cycles, all these impacts can no longer be ignored. </p>
<p>Yet politicians and economists unanimously promote economic growth as the ultimate measure of success. In this age of economic rationalism, merely to question the benefits of increasing gross domestic product (GDP) is tantamount to treason.</p>
<p>There have been challenges to this growth fetishism. In the early 1970s, the <a href="http://www.clubofrome.org">Club of Rome</a> emphasised the problems underlying ever-increasing economic growth. Despite these <a href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2002/11/01/the_dustbin_of_history_limits_to_growth">arguments being rejected</a> by mainstream economists and conservative commentators, those early 1970s predictions are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits-to-growth-was-right-new-research-shows-were-nearing-collapse">holding up very well</a>.</p>
<h2>Alternatives to increasing economic growth</h2>
<p>Under a vision of a <a href="http://steadystate.org/discover/definition/">“steady-state economy”</a>, the economy does not exceed its ecological limits with stable levels of population, consumption and GDP. The economy fits within the limits of Earth’s ecosystems with a more equitable distribution of wealth.</p>
<p>This would involve significant economic change and the “degrowth” of already wealthy nations. It is also likely to be politically unpalatable. </p>
<p>Steady-state economists maintain that capitalist markets are the most efficient way to allocate resources. Yet there is a fundamental contradiction in their rejection of growth and belief in the maintenance of capitalism, a system that by definition relies upon <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/21215-beyond-growth-or-beyond-capitalism">growth</a>.</p>
<p>For many proponents of climate action, any challenge to economic growth is steadfastly rejected. The recent <a href="http://newclimateeconomy.net">New Climate Economy</a> study has been cited as evidence that responding to climate change need not upset the economic growth model. </p>
<p>Economist <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/19/opinion/paul-krugman-could-fighting-global-warming-be-cheap-and-free.html?_r=0">Paul Krugman</a> argues the report shows that “strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth”.</p>
<p>However, <a href="http://www.postcarbon.org/paul-krugmans-errors-and-omissions/">critics argue</a> that little consideration is being given to the amount and speed of reductions required to avoid dangerous climate change.</p>
<p><a href="http://kevinanderson.info/blog/avoiding-dangerous-climate-change-demands-de-growth-strategies-from-wealthier-nations/">Climate scientists such as Kevin Anderson</a> demonstrate that industrialised nations need to reduce their emissions by 8-10% per year immediately. This is to limit global warming to the politically agreed maximum of two degrees Celsius this century. Such cuts have never been achieved and are not compatible with economic growth. “Degrowth” would need to occur at a level greater than was seen during the collapse of the former Eastern Bloc economies in the early 1990s.</p>
<p>To keep within the two-degree limit, <a href="http://www.pwc.co.uk/assets/pdf/low-carbon-economy-index-2014.pdf">PricewaterhouseCoopers</a> suggests the global economy needs to reduce its carbon intensity by 6.2% per year until 2100. This is five times faster than the current rate.</p>
<p>It is all a long way from the pumped-up optimism and economic delusions evident at the G20 talks. As <a href="http://newleftreview.org/II/21/fredric-jameson-future-city">Fredric Jameson argues</a>, “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism”. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the next decade is likely to present us with some very unpalatable truths about the conflict between a habitable environment and our addiction to growth. </p>
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<p><a href="http://aom.org/">Christopher Wright is a member of the Academy of Management</a></p>
<footer>The academy is a funding partner of The Conversation US.</footer>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Wright receives funding from the Australian Research Council. Christopher Wright is an Academy of Management scholar.</span></em></p>The recent US-China climate announcement is a significant development in humanity’s equivocal response to the climate crisis. Despite over four decades of political engagement with climate change, tangible…Christopher Wright, Professor of Organisational Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/339442014-11-14T23:58:55Z2014-11-14T23:58:55ZLatin America the overlooked trade giant of Australia’s G20<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64348/original/mnkf5wdy-1415769552.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Latin American countries, including Argentina, represent a significant trade opportunity for Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alex Proimos/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">CC BY-NC</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While much of Australia’s media has been covering Abbott’s macho stance on Russian President Vladimir Putin, the G20 meetings will be focusing on how best to improve global trade, which severely declined shortly after the global financial crisis. </p>
<p>Central to these discussions will be how best to reduce trade barriers and protectionism. For Australia, this is a great moment to seriously consider the trade expansion opportunities with Latin America, particularly at a time when G20 nations members like Argentina, Brazil and Mexico are gaining economic and political authority around the world. </p>
<p>In recent years, Australia’s trade relations with Latin America have undergone a rate of growth never seen before. Paradoxically, there are enduring perceptions in Australia of Latin America as a difficult region for engaging in business. These include misguided opinions that working in Latin America involves high levels of bureaucracy and corruption and that the region is a close competitor with Australia’s primary producers. </p>
<p>Despite South America being one of Australia’s first trading partners (starting with the First Fleet), trade obstacles need to be removed so that tariff impositions, particularly on agricultural products placed by both Europe and the US, do not limit its economic development. </p>
<p>Opportunities for trade expansion between Australia and Latin America abound. Recent <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1759-3441.12052/abstract">research</a> found some countries in Latin America have advantages in high-end elaborately transformed manufactures, which Australia does not have. These can be accessed at lower cost than from some of Latin America’s immediate competitors. Important trade opportunities in the services and in two-way foreign direct investment are also growing at a rapid pace. </p>
<p>My analysis of merchandise trade alone shows strong growth in Australian exports to the region over the last two decades. Total exports to Latin America grew 3.3 times, driven by the rapid rise in exports to Chile (4.1 times), Mexico (4.8 times), Brazil (2.5 times), Argentina (3.2 times) and Peru (4.9 times). For three of these five economies, the growth in exports was either equal or stronger than that of the rest of the world. Similarly, imports from Latin American countries grew at more than 8 times compared to the rest of the world, which nearly quadrupled. </p>
<h2>An even brighter future</h2>
<p>My forecasts of trade growth between the five Latin American countries mentioned and Australia in terms of merchandise imports and exports makes the future look even brighter. Using 2012 as the base for growth, trade growth over a five-year period is forecast to be quite strong, growing on average by between 30%, the (low growth scenario) and 70% (the high growth scenario). </p>
<p>These predictions are consistent with <a href="http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_AU/au/news-research/luckycountry/prosperity-next-wave/f0adc57f963e4410VgnVCM3000003456f70aRCRD.htm">economic analysis</a> conducted by Deloitte this year which identified “25 sectoral hotspots with the biggest potential to lift Australia’s growth trajectory over the next 20 years”. Some of the sectors that can benefit from trade with Latin America include mining, finance, education, green energy, gas, agribusiness and tourism. And its likely new sectoral drivers will emerge as both the Australian economy and that of Latin American countries continue to evolve and develop. </p>
<h2>What’s standing in the way</h2>
<p>Perceptions that Latin America is lacking corporate governance, presents a political and economic risk and will settle for the English language in trade negotiations need to be overcome. Improving the understanding of language, culture and history of Latin America is crucial for the development of solid business and social relations. </p>
<p>To reduce perceived “large distances”, more frequent flights between capital cities such as Melbourne and Santiago or Buenos Aires must be promoted. </p>
<p>Latin America offers Australia huge opportunities for economic and social engagement. With its natural economic endowments, rapidly growing middle class, young population and willingness to transform itself into highly developed societies, Latin America has left behind a past characterised by civil unrest and political turmoil and is experiencing a long term path of democracy and solid economic development. Trends in trade growth continue to point to Latin America as a region that warrants our immediate attention. The sooner we embrace these opportunities the brighter Australia’s economic future will be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33944/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alexis Sergio Esposto has received funding from the Council on Latin American Relations (COALAR). </span></em></p>While much of Australia’s media has been covering Abbott’s macho stance on Russian President Vladimir Putin, the G20 meetings will be focusing on how best to improve global trade, which severely declined…Alexis Sergio Esposto, Senior Lecturer, Economics, Swinburne University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341462014-11-14T23:07:19Z2014-11-14T23:07:19ZWho’s who in the G20 zoo? Focus on the sherpas<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64570/original/4gcjsy3p-1415951430.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The G20 sherpas might not always be easy to spot, but they're worth watching.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The spotlight may be on the leaders at this weekend’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2014/nov/15/g20-brisbane-world-leaders-meet-at-2014-summit-live">G20 Leaders’ Summit in Australia</a>, but who will be behind the leaders at the big table in Brisbane? </p>
<p>The G20 sherpas are very senior officials who have guided the policy process for the last year and finally got the leaders to the summit (cue guffaw from finance officials). Which of the sherpas will be smiling on Sunday?</p>
<h2>The G8</h2>
<p><strong>EU, France, Italy, Germany, UK (Spain, the “permanent guest”)</strong></p>
<p>In between deciding who represents the EU as the diplomatic services fuse, the European sherpas will be focused on dealing with the effects of the 2008 crisis, especially youth unemployment. Forget Putin, the man everyone will glaring at will be Luxemburg’s Jean Claude Juncker, the new President of the European Commission after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/luxembourg-a-tax-haven-by-any-other-name-33919">tax avoidance leaks</a>. </p>
<p>The EU sherpa was Antόnio José Cabral, now Paulina Dejmek-Hack. Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council will also will represent the EU, a seasoned summiteer. The UK will be protecting the City, and pushing its humanitarian credentials over an Ebola response. As the economic engine of Europe, Germany will be considering its investment options. In the long term, Europe will be defending its central role in postwar governance, especially the OECD and IMF. Gabriela Ramos, the OECD sherpa will be flying the flag for a focus on inequality.</p>
<h2>Japan</h2>
<p>The Japanese sherpa, Yasumasa Nagamine, has one of the hardest tasks in the G20. Japan has to revive its economy through the <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com.au/what-is-abenomics-2013-3">three pillars of “Abenomics”</a>, reconfigure its energy sector after the Fukuyama disaster, and manage the relationship with ASEAN. This summit will be observed closely to see if the slight thawing of the relationship with China on the APEC sidelines continues. </p>
<h2>USA</h2>
<p>President Obama might have difficulty pursuing his domestic agenda after the mid-terms, and getting the IMF reforms through Congress seem doomed, but he may be more fearless with the executive power. US sherpa Caroline Atkinson is a power player and will be capitalising on the historic climate deal with China this week. But there will be pressure from US companies like Apple to resist the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-g20-and-the-taxing-issue-of-making-big-business-pay-21466">corporate tax avoidance (BEPS) agenda</a>. </p>
<h2>The BRICS</h2>
<p><strong>Brazil</strong></p>
<p>Enio Cordeiro as Brazilian sherpa will be focused on trade now that a Brazilian, Roberto Azevedo, is running the WTO. Brazil, with Mexico and Argentina, is usually a strong voice for green growth, energy efficiency and development. The next climate negotiations (<a href="http://unfccc.int/meetings/lima_dec_2014/meeting/8141.php">COP 20</a>) will be in Peru. </p>
<p><strong>Russia</strong></p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=403&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64616/original/vv9zynpc-1415996271.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=506&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Russian sherpa Svetlana Lukash.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Russia G20</span></span>
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<p>The Russian sherpa Svetlana Lukash is always a strong presence but consider the person who has to manage the economic impact of sanctions over the Ukraine dispute, protect the legacy of the St Petersburg Summit, and stop your leader getting shirt-fronted. Diplomacy with a high degree of difficulty. Russia is likely to stand squarely as part of the BRICS in Brisbane and keep the focus on employment. </p>
<p><strong>India</strong></p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=899&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64617/original/qhpbw2cm-1415996754.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Indian sherpa Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">World Economic Forum/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span>
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<p>All eyes on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his big international debut with the November summits, so Sherpa Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu will be feeling the heat of the spotlight. An agreement with the US on Thursday about India’s role in blocking the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/business/international/us-india-agreement-clears-way-for-global-trade-deal.html?_r=0">Bali trade facilitation agreement</a> may take much of the heat away. India will undertake historic structural economic reforms, and G20 advice and pressure to meet growth targets will be important. </p>
<p><strong>China</strong></p>
<p>Most expect China to be named the host of the G20 in 2016 and to join the troika with Turkey and Australia. Chinese sherpa Li Baodong should have an excellent summit in Brisbane because China is still the engine of global growth, either number one or number two in terms of economic power (depending on how you count), and will be glowing with the success of APEC and the US climate deal. </p>
<p>A summit held in Australia profiles the Asia-Pacific region, and the role of Chinese investment here. The Chinese will be under pressure to clarify their position on transparency on beneficial ownership to prevent corruption. The President will make a historic address to the Australian Parliament next week.</p>
<p><strong>South Africa</strong></p>
<p>Jacob Zuma is a G20 veteran and BRICS stalwart, and sherpa Nozipho Mxakato-Diseko should have a productive summit. South Africa bears the weight of representing all of Africa, with the invitees, Senegal and Mauritania. We should expect a push to commit resources to tackling the spread of Ebola. Winnie Byanyima from Oxfam International is attending the summit and providing a powerful civil society perspective from Africa (Uganda). Nigeria is a contender to join the G20. </p>
<h2>MIKTA</h2>
<p><strong>Mexico</strong></p>
<p>Under fire for justice for the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/11/14/world/americas/mexico-missing-students-vignettes/">missing students</a>, Mexico will be facing pressure from the gathered press not related to its G20 role. A previous host of the Los Cabos Summit in 2012, Mexico will be enjoying the revival of the green growth agenda, and wondering why its campaign to take over the WTO went wrong.</p>
<p><strong>Indonesia</strong></p>
<p>Another high-profile political debut for the G20 Summit will be President Joko Widodo who will be bringing his new brand of blak-blakan (straightalking) diplomacy to Brisbane (one wonders if he could really outdo Mr Abbott on that score). The most important guest to the host nation Australia in diplomatic terms, Jokowi will get the red-carpet treatment, and so the new sherpa should have a great summit. Indonesia will be most interested in the infrastructure agenda. </p>
<p><strong>Korea</strong></p>
<p>South Korea is a key member of the G20, solving problems, building bridges between Asia and other regions and moving agenda issues like development and trade forward. Expect its sherpa to be working hard behind the scenes, as will invitees Singapore and New Zealand.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=880&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/64621/original/mk6sfsj7-1415998025.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1105&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Argentina sherpa Cecilia Nahon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EEUU/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Argentina is usually interested in trade and energy with a colourful leader in Christina Fernandez de Kirchner. Its sherpa is Cecilia Nahon. The focus will be on the fallout from the recent sovereign debt default in July and US legal action. </p>
<p>Saudi Arabia is usually focused on infrastructure and energy governance and is often one of the G20’s quieter actors. Saudi Arabia reportedly blocked Turkey’s bid for the UN Security Council and so there is likely to be tension with the next host. </p>
<p><strong>Turkey</strong></p>
<p>Turkey will be the host in 2015, and the new sherpa Ayse Sinirlioglu will be taking all the lessons she can from Australia to prepare. Turkey has a conflict on its borders, its EU ambitions stalled, and domestic tensions, and so challenges lie ahead as host. But Turkey has a vision to become more central to global economic governance, and Istanbul is always voted one of the coolest cities on earth. This is the first time an Islamic country will host a summit of this nature. The buzz is building. Australia, Turkey, China is a fresh combination of economic governance and the possibilities are strong. </p>
<h2>Australia</h2>
<p>The Australian sherpa Heather Smith deserves a drink and probably a sainthood on Sunday evening, but the summit looks as prepared as it possibly can be, in form and substance. We should be grateful for her leadership and the work of the G20 Taskforce. At this point, the sherpas step back and watch their leaders work their political magic, with fingers crossed.</p>
<p><em>An earlier version of this article incorrectly listed Caroline Anstey, rather than Caroline Atkinson as the US sherpa.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34146/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Susan Harris Rimmer receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is affiliated with the Think20 process.</span></em></p>The spotlight may be on the leaders at this weekend’s G20 Leaders’ Summit in Australia, but who will be behind the leaders at the big table in Brisbane? The G20 sherpas are very senior officials who have…Susan Harris Rimmer, Director of Studies, Asia Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342442014-11-14T07:30:35Z2014-11-14T07:30:35ZHow far should communications companies police the internet?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64548/original/qcynrcv7-1415935882.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">David Cameron entering parliament on Friday.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Alan Porritt</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Climate change, Tony Abbott’s encounters with Vladimir Putin, the looming G20 and much else have pushed to the sidelines another important development of this week – the indication from Barack Obama that Australia will be asked for more troops to train Iraqis.</p>
<p>Once again we are seeing a slow build-up to a formal request, the same sort of process as with the initial one.</p>
<p>The issue of more troops has come surprisingly early – it was only this week that Australian special forces started to enter Iraq. They had been held up for many weeks by the Iraqi bureaucracy.</p>
<p>The big question will be whether sending more troops – Tony Abbott’s agreement can be taken almost for granted – would be seen as “mission creep”.</p>
<p>Government sources insist that it would not change the nature of the existing mission. Their role would be training, not themselves fighting. Under the current “advise and assist” operation, the forces can go “outside the wire”, though not below battalion headquarters. The envisaged new commitment would have the additional troops “behind the wire”, a more protected position. </p>
<p>This is particularly important for the opposition. Bill Shorten has so far stuck tightly with the government’s Iraq involvement, and would want to continue to do so.</p>
<p>Another stage would again test the consensus within Labor, which would be looking carefully for any change in the nature of the mission.</p>
<p>The Iraq commitment would become more problematic politically if the bipartisanship was broken, which would give the government an incentive to ensure a change in our engagement was confined to numbers rather than involving an incremental escalation in the type of activities.</p>
<p>The fight against Islamic State (IS) is being waged by Australia on the home front as well as in Iraq, as the government tries to prevent the recruitment of more young people to the cause.</p>
<p>In his Friday address to parliament, British Prime Minister David Cameron has highlighted as a root cause of radicalisation the “extremist narrative”. He puts this ahead of causes such as poverty or exclusion from the mainstream.</p>
<p>Cameron argued that this narrative has to be tackled on all fronts – by banning extremist preachers from the country, and rooting extremism out from schools, universities and prisons. He said a particular challenge was the internet, where the obligation was not just on government but on companies too.</p>
<p>This highlights an important and sweeping area for debate.</p>
<p>In the United Kingdom earlier this month, Robert Hannigan, the new director of GCHQ, one of the British intelligence and security agencies, wrote in a Financial Times opinion piece that IS “is the first terrorist group whose members have grown up on the internet”.</p>
<p>Where al-Qaeda and its affiliates used the internet to disseminate material anonymously or meet in “dark spaces”, IS “has embraced the web as a noisy channel in which to promote itself, intimidate people, and radicalise new recruits”.</p>
<p>IS exploited “the power of the web to create a jihadi threat with near-global reach. The challenge to governments and their intelligence agencies is huge – and it can only be met with greater co-operation from technology companies”.</p>
<p>Currently in Australia we are having an argument about the government’s plan to require telecommunications companies to keep metadata for two years. Imagine if the debate were to extend to what communications companies should do in terms of monitoring and pulling down material that might act as a magnet for radicalisation.</p>
<p>There are already some controls in place where what’s on the net would incite violence or promote terrorism.</p>
<p>But where the discussion now appears to be headed is material that would not necessarily be caught by the law – and that the law doesn’t have adequate resources to find. Hannigan argues the agencies can’t tackle the scale of the challenge without more support from the private sector, including the largest US technology companies that dominate the web.</p>
<p>“However much they may dislike it, they have become the command-and-control networks of choice for terrorists and criminals, who find their services as transformational as the rest of us.”</p>
<p>Just as the internet is global so this debate involves global companies and issues. Like, for example, the tax avoidance that the G20 will discuss, it is an international issue as well as a national one.</p>
<p>It goes to questions of public interest and corporate duty, to the nature of the web, privacy, and how “free” free speech should be.</p>
<p>Hannigan writes: “As we celebrate the 25th anniversary of the spectacular creation that is the world wide web, we need a new deal between democratic governments and the technology companies in the area of protecting our citizens. It should be a deal rooted in the democratic values we share. That means addressing some uncomfortable truths. Better to do it now than in the aftermath of greater violence”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34244/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Climate change, Tony Abbott’s encounters with Vladimir Putin, the looming G20 and much else have pushed to the sidelines another important development of this week – the indication from Barack Obama that…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/341912014-11-13T19:33:37Z2014-11-13T19:33:37ZWhat to expect from the G20 communique and why we should expect more<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64527/original/56y8vpw5-1415927616.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The role of Russian president Vladimir Putin, and the other major threats of Ebola and climate change, can’t be overlooked by the G20. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Alexey Druginyn</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Although Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott believes the G20 should focus solely on economic issues, leaving security, social and environmental challenges to other forums, external pressures continue to mount as G20 leaders head into their two-day meeting in Brisbane. </p>
<p>As this year’s host, Abbott prioritised creating growth and jobs, stronger financial regulation, tax fairness, freer trade and infrastructure finance as the issues the summit and its leaders will take up. </p>
<p>But overshadowing this agenda is the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his involvement in the destabilisation of Ukraine and the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 (MH17). A second concern is the expanding terrorist conquest by ISIS across the Middle East and the isolated but related incidents around the world. And finally, the Ebola pandemic is having a devastating impact in West Africa, amid fears it might spread into the United States and Europe. </p>
<p>In reality, the success of the Brisbane summit will largely come from the work ministers and officials have done in the last nine months. The first of these successes is meeting the goal the finance ministers set in February 2014 of lifting growth by an additional 2% or more by 2018. To do so, they will produce individual country action plans that, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) confirmed, will together meet this goal. However, it has now been acknowledged that the slowdown in the global economy means a target of “more than 2%” is needed.</p>
<p>In the area of financial regulation and supervision, leaders will approve the work produced by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on resolution regimes for globally significant banks, on insurers and derivatives. They will build on the strong success of past summits to help prevent a new global financial crisis from breaking out. Success in the area of financial regulation and supervision will come if G20 leaders act to strengthen and harmonise international accounting standards in order to make all other financial regulatory reforms work.</p>
<p>Some success will also come on infrastructure. The leaders plan to launch a Global Infrastructure Initiative, containing a database that matches projects with potential investors, a knowledge platform containing expertise, standardised documentation and best practices, country commitments to improve their investment climate, assistance for new sources of finance and a Global Infrastructure Hub. This will be the first step towards creating the operating pubic-private partnerships needed for the additional 2% growth plan and raising the estimated US$60-70 trillion for projects in the next 15 years.</p>
<p>An important initiative is likely to come in the area of employment. The G20 leaders are expected to commit to increasing the percentage of women in the workforce. The initial target will be to narrow the gap between men and women in the workforce by 25% by 2025.</p>
<h2>Failing to keep up</h2>
<p>But the 2014 Brisbane summit is unlikely to produce many achievements beyond those already achieved by their ministers and international organisations. This is largely for two reasons.</p>
<p>The first is the inexperience of this year’s host, Tony Abbott. Abbott, who has no previous experience as either host or attendee of a G20 summit, also has a strong belief that governments are limited in the good they can achieve and has a strong preference for private sector work. He has also been determined to limit the agenda entirely to economic issues, but this approach is problematic as other political security issues continue to mount. These issues are bound to have severe economic impacts.</p>
<p>Because the big shocks on the road to Brisbane have erupted on these latter subjects - Ukraine, Islamic State and, above all, Ebola - the summit is poorly designed to deal with them. Moreover it is here where the failing United Nations most needs the G20’s help, whereas in the economic field, the International Monetary Fund, OECD and the G20’s own FSB, if not the WTO, have been performing well. </p>
<p>Within the G20, the country most able to lead is a United States with its surging currency and growth. But it is now led by an unpopular, lame duck president, whose party has just lost control of both houses of Congress. And the most domestically popular leader at Brisbane, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, comes from a country whose economic capability and connectivity, and political openness, are shrinking fast. The many inexperienced leaders who will be at Brisbane - from Australia, India, Turkey, Indonesia and Argentina – will make it more difficult to forge a unifying personal bond.</p>
<p>With the summit still ahead of them, the G20 leaders still have an opportunity to move forward on the progress made by their ministers in the last nine months to make the Brisbane summit successful. </p>
<p>They can set a new goal of raising global growth by 3% above trend over the next five years and returning global growth to the 4% annual level that prevailed before the global financial crisis hit.</p>
<p>Second, the leaders should recognise the economic impact of the conflict in Ukraine and take the opportunity to have a frank discussion with President Putin. They need to help him realise Russia must reverse course, before Russia’s relative capability and connectivity are reduced so much that it is no longer a systemically significant state. </p>
<p>And lastly, the summit must acknowledge that climate change harms economic growth and that bold action to control climate pollution is needed now. Without this action, G20 leaders risk riding the coat-tails of their ministers and giving the world the impression that their meeting is not necessary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Although Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott believes the G20 should focus solely on economic issues, leaving security, social and environmental challenges to other forums, external pressures continue…John Kirton, Director, G8 Research Group, University of TorontoJulia Kulik, Senior Researcher at the Global Governance Program, University of TorontoLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/342072014-11-13T19:32:04Z2014-11-13T19:32:04ZGrattan on Friday: G20 will put Abbott’s political management to the test<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/64470/original/2tkv4fwq-1415882214.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Tony Abbott's round of summiteering has given him a good opportunity to have discussions with a range of other leaders, but it complicated preparations for the G20.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Barbara Walton</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tony Abbott finds himself the party host caught somewhat off-balance as his guests set off crackers all over the place.</p>
<p>The government is – and has been all year – shouting that it wants this weekend’s G20 to be tightly focused on growth and jobs. Countries have had to produce action plans (some 1000 measures have been submitted), with a target of increasing global growth by 2% over the next five years above what it would otherwise have been.</p>
<p>Australia has wanted to keep the Brisbane summit strictly economic, narrowly defined. But now the high-profile questions of climate change and Ebola – seen as economic issues by many countries but downplayed on this score by the Abbott government – have muscled their way into the discussion.</p>
<p>Abbott is very grudging about it. “If other countries want to raise other subjects they’re entirely welcome to do so but my focus and I believe the principal focus of the conference will be on growth and jobs,” he said on Thursday.</p>
<p>This week’s headline-grabbing <a href="https://theconversation.com/landmark-us-china-pledge-is-a-step-towards-2c-climate-goal-34140">US-China deal</a> on their post-2020 plans for curbing emissions has now put the climate issue on everyone’s lips.</p>
<p>Asked about the deal at his Thursday news conference in Myanmar, Abbott sounded distinctly off-key. He said he welcomed the agreement which had “apparently” been struck, and then proceeded to play down its importance: “As for Australia, I’m focusing not on what might happen in 16 years time. I’m focusing on what we’re doing now and we’re not talking, we’re acting”.</p>
<p>This ignored the fact that soon Australia will have to think about the longer term, because it too must unveil post 2020 targets for the 2015 Paris climate conference.</p>
<p>On Ebola, after considerable delay the government has <a href="https://theconversation.com/abbott-government-to-contract-private-company-to-provide-ebola-assistance-in-west-africa-33800">recently announced</a> an (outsourced) initiative to staff a hospital in Sierra Leone on the back of British efforts. It was pressured into acting, just as it has been pushed into an inevitable G20 discussion.</p>
<p>British Prime Minister David Cameron gave notice Ebola would be an important topic, tweeting:</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"532459287935995904"}"></div></p>
<p>On another front, after Abbott had said his piece to Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of APEC to <a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-game-of-cat-and-bear-as-abbott-pursues-putin-33885">put behind him</a> the “shirtfronting” comment and minimise the distraction at G20, the presence of <a href="https://theconversation.com/defence-monitoring-russian-vessels-close-to-australia-34153">several Russian ships</a> to Australia’s north has grabbed media attention. One can imagine the cackling in the Russian camp.</p>
<p>Trying to ensure a smooth G20 hasn’t been made any easier by Abbott being on the fly, first at APEC in Beijing and then at the East Asia Summit in Myanmar.</p>
<p>This round of summiteering has given him a good opportunity for discussions with a range of other leaders, but it complicated co-ordination and preparation for the Brisbane meeting and surely must leave him dog-tired.</p>
<p>After arriving back in Australia early Friday morning, Abbott will be in Canberra for Cameron’s address to federal parliament before flying to Brisbane to start a punishing schedule.</p>
<p>On Thursday, ministers did their best to put the best light on having to deal with changing circumstances.</p>
<p>Foreign Minister Julie Bishop – who’d got a hint in Beijing that something was in the wind on climate, but not any detail – said the government had been urging the major emitters, the US and China, to indicate what they would do.</p>
<p>Treasurer Joe Hockey agreed that “of course Ebola is a significant issue” and “I have no doubt it will be discussed by the leaders”.</p>
<p>It was the Labor government that secured the G20 meeting for Australia but opposition leader Bill Shorten is highly critical of how Abbott is handling the occasion.</p>
<p>In a Thursday evening address to the Sydney Institute, Shorten zeroed in on Abbott’s vulnerability on climate change. “Throughout this year, I and Labor have consistently advocated that climate change should be at the core of the G20 agenda,” he said.</p>
<p>“How can it be that just as the world’s biggest players change the game, Tony Abbott is doubling-down on denial, and dealing Australia out.</p>
<p>"I fear it will not be long before this stubborn isolationism takes a toll on our international competitiveness.”</p>
<p>Shorten said the US-China climate deal posed two questions for Australian foreign policy. Did Abbott still plan not to attend next year’s Paris climate conference? And, given that the world’s two largest economies chose an economic forum to announce their agreement and identified climate change as an economic issue, “how on earth can Tony Abbott argue that climate change is not central to the G20 agenda?”.</p>
<p>Shorten also attacked the government for including un-passed budget measures in Australia’s action plan. “Just as the world’s economies are recognising the centrality of fairness and inclusion, Tony Abbott offers up some of his budget’s most unfair and regressive measures as the core of Australia’s G20 ‘growth plan’.</p>
<p>"Surely Australia can offer the world’s leading economies something better than a GP tax, slashing support for jobseekers and a plan for $100,000 degrees?</p>
<p>"This narrow view, this ‘little Australia’ approach sells us short to the global community.”</p>
<p>Shorten will be in Brisbane at the weekend, ensuring that there will be a dose of domestic politics around the meeting.</p>
<p>The government will get the results it wants out of the G20 summit. The main issues of its agenda will have already been bedded down – the growth target, now expected to be a little more than 2%, the action plans, a commitment to fight international tax avoidance, an undertaking to ensure banking systems are stable enough deal with crises, a pledge to reduce gender inequality, and an infrastructure information-sharing “hub” to be located in Sydney.</p>
<p>The difficulty for Abbott is that these results – which are mostly promises countries may or may not eventually deliver on – could be overshadowed in the news that reaches the public by the issues the government considers of lower priority, and by whatever media circuses there are around Putin and other distractions.</p>
<p>The summit will be a test of Abbott’s political management in a setting where he’s not the only one with strong views.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34207/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Tony Abbott finds himself the party host caught somewhat off-balance as his guests set off crackers all over the place. The government is – and has been all year – shouting that it wants this weekend’s…Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.