George Osborne's letter from Australia

To Sydney for the first of three G20 meetings in Australia this year. It’s a long way to travel, but as the formidable Treasurer, Joe Hockey, reminded the jet-lagged finance ministers and central bank governors of the world: now you all know what Australian ministers have been putting up with all these years they’ve been travelling to your meetings. The government of Tony Abbott may be new to the international stage, but they’ve laid on an impressive show. We have a tight agenda, focused on clear and achievable outcomes; and the trappings are kept to a minimum. It all augurs well for the big leaders’ summit in Brisbane this November.

I regret to say I’ve only been to Australia once before. That was on a flying visit 15 years ago with William Hague, then our Conservative party leader and now our imperturbable Foreign Secretary. He was invited to speak at the Liberal party convention by John Howard. British readers will be relieved to know this wasn’t an early exercise in coalition-forming — the Liberal party in Australia makes the British Conservative party look positively, well, liberal. I was the bag carrier on the trip, and we spent more time in an aeroplane than on the ground. The third member of our travelling group was Seb Coe, Olympic gold medal winner, athletic legend and then William’s chief of staff. He asked me to join him on a run around Sydney Harbour, past the Opera House. Sensibly, I declined. This time I did go for the Harbour run – but alone, accompanied only by the occasional cries of cockatoos from the botanical garden and at a pace that Seb would have found embarrassing. I don’t care — it was beautiful.