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Brisbane - As G20 summit host Brisbane sweltered through a blistering heat wave, world leaders on Saturday got down to the business of cementing plans to drag a sagging global economy out of the doldrums.
The leaders of the world's 20 largest economies are under pressure to take definitive action at this year's summit, rather than simply producing a set of vague, unmeasurable goals. The International Monetary Fund has warned about a "new mediocre" for the world economy, and the G20 has vowed to focus on a plan to add $2 trillion to world GDP.
US President Barack Obama touched down in Brisbane early on Saturday to join the other leaders, with talks scheduled to begin in the afternoon.
Meanwhile, the thousands of delegates and media that have descended upon the capital of Queensland, which is aptly dubbed the "Sunshine State," have been greeted by a crushing heat wave, with temperatures expected to reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Some of the sweat-stained police officers blanketing the city by the thousands have taken to dumping bottles of water on themselves to cope with the blazing sun. More than two dozen protests have been planned to coincide with the event, on everything from inequality to corporate tax evasion to Aboriginal rights.
The summit will conclude on Sunday with the release of an official communique, a rundown of what the countries have achieved and want to achieve in the future. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has repeatedly stressed that the main focus of the gathering is to show progress on a previously-announced plan of lifting the global GDP by 2% above predicted levels by 2018.
Each country is expected to present a comprehensive plan at the summit on how they will achieve that goal, but whether the communique will reveal any of those details is unclear. The G20 nations represent about 85% of world GDP.
Tax evasion
On Saturday, Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey said the group's growth strategies include 1 000 measures that will lift infrastructure investment, increase trade and competition, cut red tape and lift labour market participation.
"While we still face economic challenges in many parts of the world, I'm optimistic our 2% commitment will deliver the growth the world needs," Hockey said.
But rights groups such as The Civil Society 20 group, or C20, wants assurances that the poor will benefit the most from the plans, estimating that the additional growth could lift 1 billion people out of poverty if it was poured into the poorest 20 percent of G-20 households.
World Bank President Jim Yong Kim said reducing inequality is a concern in nearly every developing country he has visited. He believes next year's G-20 host, Turkey, would focus more heavily on developing country issues.
Tax avoidance by big, multinational companies was expected to be high on the summit's agenda, particularly in light of the recent leak of documents suggesting that hundreds of big companies such as Pepsi and IKEA had organised tax-lowering deals with Luxembourg.
The tiny nation's European neighbours reacted angrily to the news, noting that they have had to impose harsh austerity measures on their own citizens to keep government budgets afloat following the global recession.
On Saturday, Jean-Claude Juncker, two weeks into his new job as European Commission president, faced tough questioning about his tax record as prime minister of Luxembourg for 18 years. During a press conference on the sidelines of the G20, he was grilled about whether Luxembourg was guilty of "picking people's pockets" while he was the nation's leader, and asked whether he could be considered a credible representative of the European Union on the issue of tax avoidance, given his ties to Luxembourg.
Juncker largely deflected the questions.
"Tax evasion sometimes happens because of the interaction between very divergent national tax rules in accordance with the law," he said. "The result is a very low taxation of companies. This has to be avoided."
At a separate press conference, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the G20 to take more decisive action on tax evasion, noting that it had been discussed at multiple meetings, but failed to result in an agreement.
