When Prime Minister Tony Abbott threatened to shirtfront Russian leader Vladimir Putin at the G20, he ensured there would be only one story in town come November, writes Barrie Cassidy.

It took a global financial crisis - in fact, the threat of the entire financial sector collapsing - to bring world leaders under the G20 umbrella.

Before November 2008, the organisation was made up of finance ministers and central bank governors, and the global economy was the focus.

Bringing the leaders together did have some immediate impact, though the global recovery has been sluggish ever since and doubts are still raised at every meeting that decisions taken are not properly followed through, and that without individual countries committing to specific action and targets, little can be genuinely achieved.

Then to complicate the forum even further, "agenda creep" last year infiltrated the St Petersburg meeting, with Syria - and specifically the use of chemical weapons - elbowing aside the economic agenda.

Next month in Brisbane the agenda - driven by Australia - is again ambitious and targeted, with taxation, infrastructure and global growth the headline items. The aim is to encourage countries to sign up to reforms that could boost global growth by as much as 2 per cent over the next five years, and in the process create millions of jobs.

The likelihood however is that this time the agenda might not so much creep towards foreign policy as lurch, smothering everything in its path.

Perhaps that was the inevitable consequence of handing the show over to political leaders, with their preoccupation with major global events and how they play out with their domestic audiences.

Inadvertently, Tony Abbott put the writing on the wall this week when he threatened to shirtfront the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. Certainly as far as the Australian media is concerned, that is now the only story in town.

Abbott's shirtfront comment will help characterise him, just as Bob Hawke will always be remembered for telling bosses they would be "bums" if they didn't give their workers a holiday after the America's Cup victory.

There will now be exceptional interest in how Abbott follows through when Putin arrives in Australia. Whether Abbott understood exactly what constitutes a shirtfront is beside the point. He has said since that he intends to confront Putin and have a robust conversation with him.

The two leaders might - or might not - meet at APEC before then, but in Brisbane, Putin will not be able to avoid the host.

And quite apart from Abbott's inflammatory approach, the international media was going to focus anyway on how other leaders like Barack Obama and David Cameron handled the Russian leader.

In fact, government sources suggest that the United States was insistent that Putin attend precisely because they want to give the American president the chance to tackle Putin on the sidelines - not on the MH17 crash, but on the broader issue of Ukraine. Apparently the Americans think the corridors in Brisbane are the best place to have it out.

And you can be sure that if the media's not focussed on that, then it will be reporting about demonstrations and security.

The Jesuits are credited with first saying "give me a child until he is seven and I'll give you the man". The concept spawned a successful television series in Britain called Seven Up.

The G20 as a leaders meeting is six this year, and the Brisbane meeting will determine what the "child" looks like at seven. If the Jesuit theory holds true, it will also determine how it will look for years into the future.

The G20 leaders were supposed to emulate the finance ministers and co-ordinate macro-economic policies to stimulate growth and promote financial stability, but with the extra grunt and extra urgency that leaders can bring to the table.

That urgency seems to have passed. From here on in the purists might be disappointed.

The best communiqué that Tony Abbott can engineer will be nowhere near good enough to distract from the other story that he created.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.