Economic Management (Unit 4 Topic 3)  

Fifty years that remade the Australian economy

For most of the twentieth century Australia ran a closed economy. Tariffs reached 55% on clothing and 45% on cars. The dollar's value was set by government. Electricity, rail and telecommunications were state-owned monopolies. It felt safe — and by 1983 Australia had slid from 4th to 14th in the OECD on income per person.

Then, over roughly two decades, almost all of it was dismantled. Microeconomic reform is the name for that process: changing how individual markets work, rather than managing the economy as a whole through interest rates and budgets.

 

Using the timeline

Six coloured lanes run left to right across five decades — trade, finance, labour, competition policy, government business, and tax and education. Tap any dot to read what changed and why it mattered. Dot size signals significance, so the biggest ones are the reforms that reshaped the most.

Read it two ways. Follow one lane across to trace a single strand — watch tariffs fall from 55% to 5%. Or read down a year to see how much moved at once. Look at 1983: the dollar floated, the Accord was struck with the unions, and a trade agreement was signed with New Zealand, all inside twelve months.

Use the era bar to focus a period, or the filters to isolate one strand.

Then ask the hard question. The "Did it work?" tab has the evidence — prices down, productivity up, but jobs lost and towns hollowed out. Reform created winners and losers. Your job is to decide whether it was worth it. Happy exploring!