4 The latter part of this period was the one in which the realisation became widespread that the (apparently) easy gains in living standards of the post-war boom were gone, and in which pessimism about Australia’s economic future was probably at its most intense.
It was also the period when, under strong political leadership backed by a highly capable bureaucracy and an economically literate media, our determination to press on with various productivity-increasing reforms was greatest. That these two phenomena occurred together was probably not entirely a coincidence.