HIST2227 Chap.10 Reinventing Australia, 1983 to 2025
Reinventing Australia, 1983 to 2025
A revolution from above
Week 11 examines the reforms that began in 1983: the Accord, the float of the dollar, tariff cuts and privatisation.
Frank Bongiorno calls them a revolution from above, driven by an elite rather than popular demand.
Stories about the reform era
James Walter and Carolyn Holbrook test the golden age story against outcomes, and Claire Wright and Hannah Forsyth show social mobility into the corporate elite falling from the 1980s.
A link to the Final Paper
Several Final Paper options draw on this topic.
The Robodebt question asks for the history of politics, policy, bureaucracy and media from the 1980s to the 2010s, and the campaign comparison asks about elections between 1972 and 2007. Walter and Holbrook’s account of the shift of risk from the collective to individuals gives both essays a long view.
Dates to anchor an answer
Bongiorno’s chapter gives the sequence: the Accord before the March 1983 election, the float in December 1983, tariff cuts in 1988 and 1991, privatisation from 1990, Mabo in June 1992 and the Native Title Act of 1993, Howard’s win in 1996, and the defeat of the republic referendum in November 1999.
What this chapter covers
- 01
The Accord and the float of the dollar
- 02
Tariff cuts and privatisation
- 03
Economic rationalism and the protective state
- 04
The golden age of reform as a policy narrative
- 05
Higher education and the job market
- 06
Social mobility into the corporate elite
Worked example · free
Reading the fall in corporate mobility
- 144 minus 25 = 19 percentage points.
- 119 divided by 44 = 0.43, so mobility in 1986 was about 43% lower than in 1910.
- 1They argue that from the 1980s pathways into management became enclosed by credentials and, from the 1990s, board membership became a profession of its own.
Key terms
- Revolution From Above
- Bongiorno's term for reform driven by an elite rather than by popular demand.
- Great Risk Shift
- The transfer of economic risk from governments and the collective to families and individuals.
- Professional Enclosure
- Barriers to entering a profession, raised through credentials and accreditation.
- Prices and Incomes Accord
- The agreement between Labor and the unions trading policies such as Medicare for wage restraint.
- Float of the Dollar
- The December 1983 decision to let the Australian dollar's value be set by markets rather than fixed by government.
Reinventing Australia, 1983 to 2025 FAQ
Why does Bongiorno call the 1980s reforms a revolution from above?
Because they were the project of an elite in government, unions, the bureaucracy, think tanks and universities, not a response to popular demand. Unlike earlier recalibrations of Australian policy, voters never welcomed the shrinking of the protective state.
Was the reform era really a golden age?
Walter and Holbrook accept that reforms often met their stated aims, but argue the golden age story ignores unintended consequences and the reservations people felt at the time. They note that even Paul Keating said in 2017 that the philosophy he championed had run into a dead end.
What happened to social mobility from the 1980s?
Wright and Forsyth find that mobility into the boards of Australia's largest companies fell, from 35 to 45 per cent of directors in the cohorts up to 1964 to 25 to 30 per cent from 1985, as pathways into management and boardrooms became enclosed.
What was the Prices and Incomes Accord?
Before the 1983 election, Labor and the ACTU agreed a Prices and Incomes Accord under which unions accepted wage restraint in exchange for policies they favoured, Medicare among them. Bongiorno treats it as one foundation of the Hawke government's approach.
What happened at the 1999 republic referendum?
Bongiorno records that the referendum of November 1999 rejected a republic, with 55 per cent voting against and 45 per cent in favour. He places it at the close of a decade he describes as narrowing the scope of politics under the pressure of global markets.
What do Walter and Holbrook mean by the great risk shift?
They borrow Jacob Hacker's phrase for the transfer of economic risk from governments and the collective to families and individuals. Their example is the move from the Commonwealth Employment Service to privatised job agencies, which recast unemployed people as responsible for their own deficits.
Assessment move
Learn five dated reforms and practise the three layers of a policy story: intentions, outcomes and the story told afterwards. Then rehearse one paragraph that weighs the golden age story against the evidence of casual work and unemployment. For a quiz, be ready to define economic rationalism in Bongiorno’s terms and give one example of a reform that voters disliked.
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