The world needs an effective, functioning Group of Twenty (G20). After an early phase as a forum of finance ministers and central bank governors, the body was elevated to leaders’ level in order to steer the apparatus of global governance through times of great uncertainty from 2008 onwards. This period of uncertainty has been characterised by a peculiarly complex mix of financial crisis, shifting economic power and growing environmental threat. The G20’s record since 2008 is not without achievement – for example, it acted swiftly to stimulate the global economy sufficiently to avoid a recession becoming a depression – but it nevertheless remains disappointing overall, failing to break out of the trap of supposed ‘growth friendly fiscal consolidation’.  The meeting held in St Petersburg in September 2013 was hijacked by the Syria crisis and contributed substantially to the current dominant view of the G20 as an increasingly ineffective agency of global governance. This places great pressure on Australia to deliver a successful summit in November 2014. It is also apparent that the G20 now needs substantial institutional reform in order to reduce the “occasionality” of its current mode of operation and embed it more comprehensively into the work of other major global economic organisations and the activities of global civil society.