 It is now my great privilege to introduce Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Mr. Prime Minister, we are delighted to have you here in Davos for your very first annual meeting. And of course, maybe a little bit delayed, but I would like to congratulate you for your resounding victory of your party in Australia's recent national elections in September. But you join us here not just as the Prime Minister of Australia, but as the chair of the G20 Group. It has become a tradition that the chairs of the G20, you remember the last years, come to Davos and present their objectives, their priorities for the G20 agenda of 2014 in this case. So, Prime Minister, we welcome you very cordially here in the snow of Davos. Please join me here at Sir Ektom. Professor, thank you so much for your introduction. Thank you for the honour of this invitation. And may I say the snow might be outside, but it's very warm in every sense here in this theatre. For more than 40 years, this World Economic Forum here at Davos has been an important contributor to global progress. It's brought together some of the best thinkers and most important decision makers, not to dwell on problems, but to focus on our opportunities. And as 2014 begins, it's much easier to be optimistic. In the United States, economic growth is set to rise from under 2% to almost 3%, with a million jobs created in the last year. China's growth is moderating as we all know, but it's likely to remain over 7%. And even the eurozone is finally growing again. Of course, as we all know, recovery remains fragile. The US taper will need deft management. Around the world, over 300 million young people are neither working nor studying in the global economy, needs 30 million more jobs just to restore employment levels from before the global financial crisis. The challenge everywhere is to promote sustainable, private sector-led growth and employment, and to avoid government-nosed-best action for action's sake. That's the challenge we face. It's well worth noting, as we contemplate that challenge, if only to remind ourselves of the good that can be done, that in the past few decades, more has been achieved to reduce poverty than at any other period in human history. In countries like China, India and Indonesia, many hundreds of millions have been lifted from subsistence to the middle class. Despite the crisis worldwide, income per person is still up by over 60% in the past decade. The global middle class is growing from 1.8 billion now to over 3 billion in 10 years time. This progress is partly due to better science and technology. It's partly due to the inherent human aspiration to do better. Mostly, though, it's been driven by the intellectual and philosophical conviction that freer trade and smaller government will strengthen prosperity and the instinct that empowered citizens can do more for themselves than government will ever do for them. Essentially, what's happened over the past few decades is that officialdom has begun to grasp that human freedom is less a threat than an opportunity. And as soon as people have economic freedom, they create markets. That's what they do. Markets are the proven answer to the problem of scarcity. They rest as Roger Scruton has just observed upon the kind of moral order, moral order that arises from below as people take responsibility for their lives, learn to honour their agreements and live in justice and charity with their neighbours. Now, even though the crisis was the gravest economic challenge the world has faced since the 1930s, it's important to remember that it was not a crisis of markets but one of governance. Then it was the G20 which helped to coordinate the actions which prevented another great depression. The challenge as we continue to work through the weaknesses that brought on the crisis is to strengthen governance without suppressing the vitality of capitalism. The crisis, after all, has not changed any, any of the basic laws of economics. The lesson of recent history, whether it's the collapse of Soviet-style communism, the phenomenal growth of Asian economies or even the slow and painful recovery from the crisis of 2008 and 2009, is that real progress is always built on clear fundamentals. You can't spend what you haven't got. No country has ever taxed or subsidised its way to prosperity. You don't address debt and deficit with yet more debt and deficit. And profit is not a dirty word because success in business is something to be proud of. After all, you cannot have strong economies, strong communities without strong economies to sustain them and you can't have strong economies without profitable private businesses. Above all else, as we move forward into Australia's G20 year, policy makers need to understand that every dollar, every dollar that government spends, comes from the people, either through taxes or borrowings or over the past few years through this process known as quantitative easing, which cannot be indefinitely sustained. Now, a certain level of government spending is necessary and good. In Lincoln's words, governments should do for people what they cannot do for themselves and no more. Richer people, stronger countries and a better world all depend upon policy makers grasp of these fundamentals and there's no better place to reiterate them than this World Economic Forum creator of the Global Comparitiveness Index as well as of this conference. As always, stronger economic growth is the key to addressing almost every global problem. Stronger growth requires lower simpler and fairer taxes that don't stifle business creativity and stronger growth requires getting government spending under control. So the taxes can come down and reducing regulation so that productivity can rise. In the decade prior to the crisis, consistent surpluses and a preference for business helped my country, Australia, to become one of the world's best performing economies. Then, a subsequent government decided that the crisis had changed the rules and that we should spend our way to prosperity. Well, the reason for spending soon passed, but the spending didn't stop because when it comes to spending, governments can be like addicts in search of a fix. But after the recent election, I'm pleased to say Australia is under new management and once more open for business. To boost private sector growth and employment, the new government is cutting red tape and reducing the tax burden by scrapping the carbon tax and the mining tax. We've established a once-in-a-generation commission of audit to reconsider the size, the scope and the efficiency of government. We're streamlining environmental approvals and have already ticked off new projects worth over $400 billion. We've successfully concluded negotiations for a free trade agreement with South Korea and we're working on agreements with Japan, China, India and Indonesia as well as wider ones such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. With an ageing population, as so many countries have, we're implementing measures to get more people into work like a fair income, as we say in Australia, paid parental leave scheme to give mothers in the workforce their full wage for six months. We're investigating childcare changes that will respond to modern families participating in around-the-clock economy. We determined that fit, working-age people will work, will work preferably for a wage, but if not as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits. We'll do more to keep people with temporary health conditions in the workforce rather than on a pension. And we're accelerating the construction of major infrastructure, especially roads because time spent in traffic jams is time lost from work and family. Every country's circumstances are different. But this is what we are doing in Australia to boost growth, productivity and participation. Some countries might find our example instructive just as we have learnt from others' experiences. But growth is the result of global conditions as well as domestic policies. And this year, Australia is in a unique position to promote global growth as chair of the G20. If the largest economies can individually achieve higher growth and can cooperate to achieve higher global growth, obviously every country benefits. At St. Petersburg last year, each G20 country agreed to prepare its own comprehensive growth strategy to feed into a G20-wide action plan. Now, I'm very much looking forward to respectful but robust discussion of each country's national plan. Each of us can learn from canvassing the problems we all face and even more importantly, the problems that can only be solved by countries working together. This year's Brisbane summit will focus on just a few key subjects because progress usually comes one step at a time. Australia's aim is a communique, just three pages long explaining precisely how good intentions are being put into practice. Like last year, this year's G20 must be more than a talk fest. And as always, trade comes first. People trade with each other because it's in their interest to do so. Every time one person freely trades with another, wealth increases. And just as trade within countries increases wealth, trade between countries increases wealth, that's why we should all be missionaries for free trade. At the very least, the G20 this year should renew its commitment against protectionism and in favour of freer markets. Each country should renew its resolve to undo any protectionist measures put in place since the crisis. But better still, each country should commit to open up trade through unilateral, bilateral, plurilateral and multilateral actions and through domestic reforms to help businesses engage more fully in global commerce. I want to make this very clear. As a trading nation, Australia will make the most of its G20 presidency to promote free trade. Over time, everyone benefits because in a global economy, countries end up focusing on what they do best. A more global economy with stronger cross-border investment eventually helps everyone because it generates more wealth and ultimately creates more jobs. We all know that money's tendency to flow to where taxes are lowest is a powerful incentive for all countries to keep taxes down. One of the side effects of globalization is more ability to take advantage of different countries' tax regimes and different national tax arrangements have not always kept up with the rise of services and the pervasiveness of digital technologies. So this year, the G20 will continue to tackle businesses artificially generating profits to tax, to chase tax opportunities rather than market ones. The essential principle is that you should normally pay tax in the country where you've earned the revenue. My hope is to have a really frank, leader's-only discussion in Brisbane about the biggest issues we face, including digitalization and its implications for tax, trade and global integration because taxes need to be fair as well as low in order to preserve the legitimacy of free markets. For the leaders of the countries generating, 85% of the world's GDP, merely to agree on the principles needed for taxation to be fair in a globalized economy would be a big step forward. Then of course, there's the worldwide infrastructure deficit with the OECD estimating that over $50 trillion in infrastructure investment is needed by 2030. Developing countries need new infrastructure, developed countries need rebuilt infrastructure, and almost every country is struggling to finance the infrastructure it needs. It should be so much easier to get big new road, rail, port and dam infrastructure off the ground. And we can do that through attracting more private capital with sensible pricing policies and better regulatory practices. As an infrastructure prime minister, my hope as G20 host is to bring policymakers, financiers and builders together to identify practical ways of increasing long-term infrastructure financing. But what investors really need is greater confidence that governments won't change the rules after the investment has been made. Now the G20 assumed its current form in response to the crisis, which was triggered by bad banking practices. So at the heart of the G20's work is building the resilience of the financial sector, helping to prevent and manage the failure of globally important financial institutions, making derivatives markets safer and improving the oversight of the shadow banking sector. Financial regulation is always a work in progress. But these reforms do now need to be finalised in ways that promote confidence without eliminating risk. The challenge for authorities is to keep abreast of developments not to lag behind them as they did pre-crisis and at all times to maintain the public's trust. On tax, trade, infrastructure, employment and banking, we owe it to our citizens on whose behalf we attend international conferences to maximise the specific outcomes from this year's G20. Finally, governments must always remember that an economy is far more like an organism than a machine. A strong economy is far less likely to be one responding to central control than one spontaneously generating its own growth. After all, government doesn't create wealth. People do when they run profitable businesses. And government's role is to nurture its citizens rather than to promote itself. At the start of Australia's G20 presidency, the government and people of Australia look forward to welcoming national leaders and international opinion-formers to our country. I promise you, we will make your trip worthwhile. Australia is determined as a responsible and committed G20 chair to promote better global governance. We will strive to build on the good work of Russia's presidency and to lay the foundations for further progress under Turkey in 2015. Better governance, though, is not the same as more government. That is so important that I want to repeat it. Better governance is not the same as more government. Ultimately, the G20 is not about us in government. It is about the people, our masters. Thanks very much. Thank you, Prime Minister. I think your worlds and your objectives certainly are very much welcomed in this hall because it's very business-oriented and it's very people-oriented. Some of the projects you outlined, particularly the infrastructure project, is, as you know, also one of the key initiatives of the World Economic Forum, which we are carrying out at this moment under the chair of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown. So we hope to assist you, to contribute to your objectives as much as possible. And thank you again for coming all the long way from Australia, particularly when you can profit from your summertime. But I think it was worthwhile to show us what are your objectives and we support you in your objectives. Thank you, Prime Minister.