Here, there are two aspects that are important: the first is the general flexibility of the economy to adjust to changes in the external environment; and the second is the flexibility that economic policy had to respond to changes in this environment. Without both of these aspects, the recent economic history of Australia would have been quite different.
This flexibility, though, did not just materialise out of thin air. Instead, it was the result of many years of policy reform and hard work by governments and business.