Australia’s Prime Minister has arrived in the UK for the G7-plus dialogue, which he said will focus on Boris Johnson’s plan to “vaccinate the world”, climate change, and peace in the Indo-Pacific. “The G7 plus isn’t about a club; it is about ensuring a world that favors freedom and inclusive world order that all countries can engage, trade with each other – and all countries can do so without coercion and so do consistent with their sovereign issues. He said leaders would be making the most of the opportunity to meet in person for the time in nearly two years. We have spent the past 18 months communicating over screens. There is no substitute for leaders getting together and doing what we’re doing now.
Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden during their bilateral meeting in Carbis Bay, Britain, 10 June 2021.” src=”https://sl.sbs.com.au/public/image/file/2face757-2a47-4642-8ac5-e280f3c192c1″ alt=” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden during their bilateral meeting in Carbis Bay, Britain, 10 June 2021.” width=”700″ height=”467″ />
“This is the third occasion that we have had the privilege to be invited to be part of these discussions. There has never been a more critical time for Australia to be sitting at such a table dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recession it has caused, and the recovery we are building, particularly at home in Australia. G7 leaders are expected to pledge to donate one billion COVID-19 vaccine doses to poor countries on the agenda in a show of Western democratic cohesion.
The club of leading economies – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States – says a joint approach is the world’s best chance to recover from the global health crisis and tackle climate change.
President Joe Biden has set the tone, ditching Donald Trump’s isolationist stance to ram home a message of resolve by the G7 and NATO against both Beijing and Moscow, as he heads into his first sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week in Geneva.
Campaigners say the G7’s vaccine donations pledge for this year and next – including 500 million US doses – is far too little, too late to end a pandemic that has claimed over 3.7 million lives worldwide.
“If the best G7 leaders can manage is to donate one billion vaccine doses, then this summit will have been a failure,” Oxfam said, insisting the world needs 11 billion doses.
But the G7 has recognized it needs to rise to compete in “vaccine diplomacy” efforts launched by China and Russia, with the Biden administration stressing it expects nothing in return for its donated jabs. G7 leaders meeting at the seaside resort of Carbis Bay in Cornwall, southwest England, are also expected to outline more help for developing nations to build up infrastructure as a counterpoint to the debt-fuelled spending by China in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The US official said the initiative “will embrace high standards, transparent, climate-friendly, non-corrupt mechanism” for infrastructure investment in the developing world.
