But until 1974, the Australian general government sector had recorded more or less continual significant surpluses, so the turn to deficit in 1975/76, for the first time since the early 1950s, was substantial and, at the time, quite controversial. Reducing the deficit in the sluggish economy of the late 1970s was hard.
Deficits grew much larger in the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s. 1  Australia’s success in using monetary targeting was mixed, as it was in most countries. The tools to exert control over those measures of money were not really available.