24 August 2009Australia and the west missed an opportunity when they largely ignored a UN report on the financial crisis, writes Ross Buckley in Inside Story

A DECADE AGO, in response to the Asian and Russian economic crises, the finance ministers of the seven biggest economies created a new organisation, the G20. For the next nine years the influence of the G20 grew but slowly. Then, last year, the G7 handed over the role of coordinating the global response to the financial crisis. For the first time, the G20 was in the driver’s seat.

Made up of nineteen nations and the European Union, the G20 represents 85 per cent of global GDP, 80 per cent of world trade, and two-thirds of the world’s people. In addition to the G7 nations, it includes Brazil, China and India; Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation; Turkey, the bridge in so many ways between Europe and the Middle East; and South Africa. Even Australia gets a guernsey. The G20 is far better suited than its predecessor to the job of steering the world through a crisis...

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