When the central bank governors and finance ministers from the G20 agreed in February to increase growth by at least two percentage points over the next five years, they fell short of delivering a common…
Are the right people at the table to ensure global tax reform benefits everyone?
Gates Foundation/Flickr
Tax reform is squarely on the agenda for the G20 Brisbane summit in November. The current international tax regime is broken and it’s going to take significant effort on a global scale to fix it. In a…
Poorer people are more vulnerable to the impact of extreme weather events. Pictured: the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan.
DFID - UK Department for International Development/Flickr
Climate projections suggest that, thanks to human activity, we will likely see an increase in extreme weather events, disruptions to agriculture, loss of livelihoods and displacement of people. While everyone…
The G20 summit in Toronto in 2010 was marred by violent clashes between protestors and police. Will there be a repeat in Queensland later this year?
EPA/Warren Toda
Queensland will be on the world stage when it hosts some of the most powerful world leaders during the G20 summit this November. But how prepared is Queensland for the expected protests at the event, and…
Europe’s slow recovery from the GFC has had implications for its trade partners, including Australia and the US.
Australian Government/AAP
As debate about the economic versus political role of the G20 takes hold, it’s worth looking back at how successfully member countries cooperated in promoting economic recovery after the global financial…
Australia is unlikely to gain the support needed from other G20 countries to block Russia attending the G20.
AAP Image/NewZulu/Hugh Peterswald
The downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 has considerably increased the strain on the relationship between Russia and the European Union and United States on the other side. Following the escalation…
Australia has improved its global innovation ranking - but future budget could put this progress at risk.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
This year’s news on Australia’s global innovation ranking could be a lot worse, and probably will be in the future if the Federal Government gets its way with proposed budget cuts to our already inadequate…
News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch joined Alexander Shokhin, President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and Business Council of Australia President Catherine Livingstone at the B20 summit this week.
Jason Reed/AAP/Reuters
The Business 20 (B20) summit typically attracts the global corporate glitterati, as the usual suspects assemble in alpine retreats like Davos; cinema-infused beach towns like Cannes; or sunny Mexican resorts…
The B20 and G20 agendas are both focused on economic growth, but Prime Minister Tony Abbott wants to avoid linking climate policy to the agenda.
Aman Sharma/AAP
In a speech delivered at ANU in April last year, then shadow environment minister Greg Hunt looked toward Australia’s host role for the G20 during 2014. Regarding climate policy he said Australia should…
Business leaders would prefer to align job skills with labour shortages.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.com
The B20 business leaders meeting this week in advance of November’s G20 summit play an important role in advising on what to do about those intractable global issues of economic growth and job creation…
Public anger over the recent federal budget blindsided big business who advised government on its key measures.
AAP/Courtney Fry
Many who study or comment on contemporary business and politics equate corporate leadership with the ability to influence events in a coherent or knowledgeable way. The usual narrative is that CEOs of…
Brisbane is set to benefit from November’s G20 summit, but more work is required to boost international travel flows.
LJ Mears/Flickr
When the powerful gather for the G20 summit in Brisbane this November, the core mandate is to discuss measures to support global economic growth, including trade liberalisation, investment and infrastructure…
G20 countries - including Australia - could improve their whistleblower protections.
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The G20 countries’ whistleblower protection laws fail to meet best international standards, according to the first independent evaluation of both public and private sector whistleblowing laws. This is…
What role can civil society organisations have on the agenda of the G20, which Australia is president of this year?
AAP/Dan Himbrechts
One of the many preparatory events leading up to the G20 Leaders Summit in Australia later this year is the C20 Summit, which will begin in Melbourne on Thursday. The C20 – or Civil Society 20 – aims to…
While Australia takes centre stage as this year’s G20 host, some of Joe Hockey’s budget policies are on the group’s ideological fringes.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
Australia is hosting the G20 this year and showcasing to the world its approach to welfare policy: deny young people income support for up to six months and instead make more food vouchers available. This…
The G20 has agreed on new rules to combat offshore tax evasion.
Jason Reed/AAP
When Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott weighed in on plans for an Australian tax crackdown on multinationals last week, she warned the move could risk competitiveness and lead to companies…
OECD data shows some of the most vulnerable in society suffered disproportionately after the last financial crisis.
Dan Himbrechts/AAP
Everybody would agree that growth, defined as a steady increase in gross domestic product, is a necessary condition for economic development. There is simply no country that has reduced poverty and improved…
US multinationals, through a network of lobby groups, are pushing back against attempts to reform international corporate taxation.
EPA/Michael Reynolds
Researchers estimate the US loses more than US$90 billion annually in corporate income tax revenues from tax loopholes and tax havens, also known as base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). With a growing…
Imagine you’d organised a much-anticipated party but because of something you’d said or done nobody turned up? To dismiss the party in the first place would smack of sour grapes but this pretty much captures…
Will the global community definitively stigmatise Russia as an international pariah until it renounces the use of force to challenge a UN member’s territorial integrity?
EPA/Alexey Nikolsky
The international community has been impotent since Russia responded to the November 2013 Ukraine crisis with force, culminating in annexation of the Ukrainian territory of Crimea this month. The G7’s…