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2014 Brisbane Summit | G20 Finance Ministers Meetings

Opening Remarks at First G20 Plenary Session

Tony Abbott, Prime Minister, Australia
Brisbane, November 15, 2014

After that splendid welcome, it's now down to work and this is the world's work that we are engaged on today and tomorrow.

As you look around the world there are many difficulties and problems. There are problems in the Middle East, there are problems in Eastern Europe, there are terrible problems in West Africa. Our growth has been fragile, but the message that should come from us over these next two days is a message of hope and optimism.

Yes, our world can grow and, yes, our world can deliver the jobs that our people want.

There have been many conferences which have talked about what we want. This conference, thanks to the good work of our finance ministers, thanks to the good work of our officials, is about how we will deliver. It's not just what we want to achieve; it is how we will deliver it.

We believe that as a result of the work that we will do, the world can grow by more than 2 per cent more over the next five years than would otherwise be the case and that is millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in extra production and it's because of the work that we are doing and we are agreeing on in these few days.

Yes, we want freer trade and we will deliver it.

Yes, we need more infrastructure and we will build it.

Yes, we are embarked on a series of important structural reforms and we will deliver them.

And, we need fiscal consolidation so that we can live within our means.

So, this is our message to the world that governments can deliver, that governments can agree, that the world can be better, that there can be higher growth and more jobs. That's the message that I want to go forward from these two days. That's what the world expects of us – they want more growth, they want more jobs, but it's now up to us to deliver it.

Source: Official website of the 2014 Brisbane Summit

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