Group of 20 (G20)

  • Lies, lies and nuclear submarines

    The manoeuvring between French president, the Australian PM and the US President was on full display at the G20, writes Binoy Kampmark.

  • Australia is a climate pariah

    Prime Minister Scott Morrison made Australia even more of a climate pariah at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, argues Sarah Hathway.

  • How Murdoch cares for the underprivileged

    At a G20 meeting last October, Rupert Murdoch surprised some with a speech that criticised world leaders for, as it was described in his Australian newspaper, “their policies [that] have caused a ‘massive shift’ in societies to benefit the super-rich with a legacy of social polarisation”. In particular, Murdoch criticised youth unemployment: “The unemployment rate for Americans under the age of 25 is 13%, which sounds awful until I remember that in the eurozone that number is 23%, and it is twice as high in places like Spain and Greece, and parts of France and Italy.

  • Climate disaster subsided by billions from G20

    Despite pledging in 2009 to phase out public subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, G20 countries have disregarded those promises and are now spending US$88 billion a year to fund the discovery of new gas, coal, and oil deposits around the world, according to a new report published last month by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International.

  • Billionaires to profit from expensive public-subsidised summits

    The Australian public has to foot a $500 million bill for hosting the G20 summit in Brisbane last weekend. Just before that, the public funded a delegation — including our Rambo Prime Minister, Tony Abbott — to the APEC summit in Beijing. We don't know what that excursion cost the public, but you can be sure it wasn't peanuts. So was it worth it? After all, Abbott did not even try to shirtfront Russian President Vladimir Putin.

  • Liveblog: Protests and people's summit at Brisbane G20

    Leaders from around the world will descend on Brisbane this week for the G20 economic forum. In response, people are gathering in Brisbane to hold alternative discussions about transforming society to a more just and sustainable one.

  • Hockey faces G20 protests in Cairns

    Treasurer Joe Hockey could not escape hearing the voice of the people when 100 staff, students and community activists rallied on the Smithfield campus of James Cook University in Cairns on September 18. The rally highlighted the federal government's planned cuts to higher education and the rest of the budget. The National Tertiary Education Union JCU branch called the rally because Hockey was speaking at a business conference at JCU before attending a G20 finance ministers meeting in Cairns.

  • G20’s toxic remedies to hurt poor

    The June 26-27 Toronto summit of the exclusive Group of 20 club, to which the world’s richest countries invited the heads of state of the major emerging countries, raised great expectations — but it ended as empty as previous meetings As in London in 2008 and Pittsburgh in 2009, the Toronto G20 discussions focused on a way out of the economic crisis. But a capitalist way out — favouring creditors and great powers. For the past two years, global financial regulation has been an elusive sea serpent, unsurprisingly resulting in no concrete measures.