ABSTRACT
Under the successive Whitlam, Eraser and Hawke governments, Australia has been transformed from a corporatist and protected economy to an open economy in the neo-liberal mould. The transition has been a protracted process of trial and error which has not lacked political drama. Money capital (so central in the neo-liberal power bloc) in Australia as elsewhere has a very large foreign component. For this strongly transnational fraction of capital to gain ascendance on the domestic Australian scene it has therefore been necessary to construct a domestic support base for its ‘neo-liberal’ policies. That construction is not an easy task, nor is it without its internal contradictions. Neither has the transition been completed: present-day Australia is by no means a faithful copy of an ideal neo-liberal blueprint. But the main priorities of the country’s current economic and social policies are in line with the ideological tenets of neo-liberalism and a new domestic power bloc has come to the fore to shape and carry out those policies. The replacement of Hawke by Keating (1991) signalled an intensification rather than a relaxation of these policies.
