LIMA -- Although the global financial crisis is tipping into an economic one, pessimism must not sap the will for further concerted international action, the leaders of Australia and New Zealand said Friday.

"There is a substantially advanced boutique industry called 'gloom and doom' that is all about people saying how bad it is," Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told a joint media conference with his New Zealand counterpart John Key.

"You can either be part and parcel of that process or you can take up the mantle of leadership and do something about it," he said after delivering a speech on the issue at an APEC summit underway in the Peruvian capital Lima.

Rudd stressed that he believed more action was required in the form of monetary policy changes and fiscal stimulus packages around the world -- and that such moves should be worked out in the G20 group of advanced and developing nations.

Key, who was sworn in just the day before as his country's new leader, said he fully backed the push by Rudd and by other G20 leaders to see the organization gain prominence in setting global economic policy.

Specifically, he said, "we need to pass Doha," referring to a round of world trade talks which has been stalled since July but which is now being revived as a potential curb on some of the effects of the global slowdown.

Rudd, in a speech to APEC delegates just before the news conference, said the G20 was "the most appropriate mechanism for the future" because it was a representative body that reflected "the increased economic might of the Asia-Pacific."

His address -- one of the first by the heads of state and government at the gathering of 21 Asia-Pacific member economies -- followed one by Chinese President Hu Jintao that also gave a grim view of the turn the world's economy has taken.

"Already, in a little more than a year, the financial crisis has caused the loss of nearly half the wealth held on the world stock markets, and is expected to lead to a loss of three percent of global GDP next year," Rudd said.

He noted a forecast from the International Labor Organization that the number of jobless will rise to 210 million next year.

"But the test of political leadership is not simply to describe political events. It is not to talk about them. It is to act on them... and, where possible, to act ahead of the curve."

To that end, he called for markets to be "properly regulated," saying "the origins of the current crisis lie in the largely unregulated sectors of our financial markets that brought out the absolute worst in the most extreme forms of capitalism."

New, coordinated monetary and fiscal policy action had to be taken "with urgency," he said.

Australia, meanwhile, remained committed to combating climate change, even as "there has been conjecture" that the global financial crisis would swipe that goal off the table.

"Climate change presents a very real threat to global economic growth, jobs and prosperity," Rudd said.

He singled out the world's two biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, in his call for international cooperation in tackling the challenge.

Those two countries have in the past resisted concerted efforts against climate change, preferring to put economic growth first, though there have been hopes by countries signed on to the Kyoto Protocol that the United States, under incoming president Barack Obama, will change its stance.