Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Franklin for her question because we are in the middle of a global recession and that requires global solutions. The meeting at the weekend agreed to take whatever steps are necessary to restore growth. It is pretty fair to say that the meeting at the weekend was one of the most important G20 meetings that has ever been held. It made quite substantial progress in advance of the leaders’ meeting in a couple of weeks time. It is worth focusing on why the finance ministers were so galvanised, if you like, at this meeting over the weekend, because the latest figures that are coming out on global growth are sobering. Indeed, figures presented at the meeting at the weekend show that, on an annualised basis, growth in the developed world went back seven per cent in the December quarter. What this demonstrates is just how difficult the global environment is at the moment and why there is such an urgent need for there to be international action.

Four achievements stand out from the meeting over the weekend. The first one was that all of the 20 largest economies in the world are focused on dealing with the problem of toxic assets in the banking system. This is very important because it goes to the core of the ability of credit to flow globally and that then goes to the core issue of confidence in the international financial system. It is the case that the failure or inability of some governments to clean up these toxic assets, which we did not have in this country, but to clean them up elsewhere, is certainly restricting growth in domestic economies, slowing the world economy and then further eroding confidence in the international economy. It was good to see an agreement to a framework for international cooperation in this area which is based largely on proposals put forward by the Prime Minister. Our government put forward a set of proposals, as did the British government, and they were substantially adopted in the communique.

Secondly, all of the 20 largest economies in the world agreed on the importance of economic stimulus, on the importance of fiscal stimulus—

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