While Australia’s interests are well-served by the G20, it is also true that the forum suffers from some significant shortcomings. The G20 has not yet managed the transition from a crisis committee to a peacetime steering committee for international policy cooperation. Former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown has even gone as far to assert that the G20 is now widely perceived as ineffective, despite the fact that Brown was a key figure in the G20’s response to the global financial crisis.[12] The G20’s agenda has continued to expand while less is being delivered, raising doubts about the point in maintaining such a cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming forum.[13] The G20 has three main weaknesses that Australia needs to consider: its reputation for being an out-of-touch elite forum; the proliferation of G20 meetings; and the inconsistencies in its agenda between host years.

In the recent context of populist backlash against globalisation, the G20’s reputation as a self-selected meeting of the world’s top economic elites is undoubtedly problematic. Leaders value the forum for closed-door discussions, but the lack of transparency frustrates civil society groups and fails to convince citizens of the value of the forum. Further, the G20 has failed to connect global issues to local politics. G20 documents — the only thing that most outside observers can access — are long, technical, and full of jargon. G20 communiqués in recent years have been largely negotiated and agreed by bureaucrats before the leaders meet, leading to lowest common denominator resolutions. The G20 continues to neglect its inherent strength, which is the direct involvement of political leaders.

The forum is also increasingly weighed down by the number of its meetings. The ever-expanding list of G20 ministerial meetings now includes annual gatherings of tourism ministers, agriculture ministers, and trade ministers, among others. In addition, there has been a proliferation of side meetings of, inter alia, the engagement groups of the Think 20, Business 20, Civil 20, Labour 20, Women 20, and Youth 20. While some of these meetings are useful, their proliferation contributes to the perception of the forum having a crowded and ever-lengthening agenda. It has also made the G20 a more time-consuming exercise for governments the world over, which makes it more likely that governments will disengage.

Even the main channels of work in the G20 could be improved. There are two main tracks for G20 work: the finance track for finance ministers and central bank governors, and the Sherpa track that is run by delegates from G20 leaders’ departments. Discussions in the finance track are the backbone of the G20 and the area where the G20 has achieved the most success. In these meetings, there are reasons to be optimistic about the forum’s chances of advancing issues. The G20 has been instrumental when it comes to economic crisis management. The finance ministers and central bank governors meetings over the past seven years have seen notable progress on standards for financial regulation and international taxation, and reform of the international financial architecture.

Outside of what has been delivered in the finance track, however, there is less reason to be optimistic. The Sherpa track now involves more intractable multilateral issues such as international trade, energy governance, refugees, health, terrorism, corruption, climate change, and development. These are all areas where other multilateral institutions have struggled to make progress and the international governance architecture is deficient. The G20 can add political momentum but viewpoints on these issues among members differ significantly and the conversation is challenging. Ultimately, the G20’s role is to provide the political drive that makes global governance work better; it cannot seek to replace all institutions.

Finally, the rotating presidency of the G20 is both a blessing and a curse for the forum. There is greater flexibility in not having a permanent secretariat, but this means the forum is sometimes hostage to the domestic interests of the host. There is a tendency of G20 host countries to be clouded by national interests ­­— Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott not wanting to discuss climate change or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan focusing on conflict in the Middle East — and this undermines the potential of the G20. There is significant variation in the agenda each year based on domestic circumstances, bureaucratic capacity, and the commitment of the host to multilateralism. The effectiveness of the host determines how many issues are advanced and whether those issues are genuine global challenges requiring international cooperation.

None of these weaknesses are, however, a reason to abandon or downgrade participation in the G20. Despite its design flaws, the G20 still has a strong mandate that was set out at the first finance ministers’ meeting in 1999: to prepare the international community for economic crises and explore possible domestic policy responses to the challenges of globalisation. There is now a daunting series of known economic risks in the large emerging markets of China, Russia, and Brazil, as well as the developed economies of the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, and other EU member countries. Any of these risks could further destabilise the global economy and harm global macroeconomic cooperation. There is still a need, therefore, for a forum that brings together the leaders of the most important economies on a regular basis to address these risks.

The 2016 US presidential campaign has, for example, highlighted risks to global free trade in a country that has long been its champion. The Republican Party nominee, Donald Trump, is campaigning on a populist platform that proposes to end the US campaign for mega-regional trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. But even Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton seems to have succumbed to nativist sentiment by abandoning her support of the TPP. In the absence of US leadership on free trade the G20 is best placed to fill the vacuum. G20 members could act to reform the global trade architecture — particularly the World Trade Organization — strengthening the future for multilateral trade liberalisation.

The G20 can also play a role in countering growing anti-globalisation sentiment around the world. While many of the policy responses to these sentiments will continue to be led by national governments, the G20 can play a role by setting expectations and norms about globalisation, and generating a sense of urgency about negative economic risks. To do that, however, the G20 will need to be stronger, clearer, and more robust in its rhetoric defending the liberal economic order and supporting international financial institutions (such as the IMF).