Ask any grey beard of Australian economics about the pre-1980s period and they will describe a closed economy that relied upon protection, national champions, policy that favoured businesses not markets, comfortable relationships between unions and corporations and mateship.
Although not without its flaws, Paul Kelly’s seminal work, “The End of Certainty” neatly described this as the end point of the “Australian Settlement”, a bipartisan political economic doctrine sealed in the Federation years and involving industry protection to privileged local industry over foreign competition, wage and price fixation to guarantee equitable income distribution and paternalism to enable the government of the day to police the lot. There was also racial purity and commitment to foreign empire but they are not so important for this discussion.
It was a unique blend of colonial and post-colonial values mixing privilege, egalitarianism, centralisation and liberalism that envisioned Australia as an improved rather than radically altered version of the old world
