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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
Peta Mitchell, Queensland University of Technology; Axel Bruns, Queensland University of Technology; Darryl Woodford, Queensland University of Technology, and Katie Prowd, Queensland University of Technology
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
G20 nations have supported “strong and effective” action on climate change, but included some equivocal wording on the timing for issuing post-2020 targets and on the Green Climate Fund to accommodate…
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…
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…
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…