ABSTRACT
In Australia, industry policy in the past has been a major area of government intervention. The beginning of the movement toward microeconomic reform in Australia came about as a consequence of the debates over tariffs and agricultural pricing policy in the mid-1970s. It seems, therefore, an appropriate place to start our study of each area of government intervention. Although the Australian public was generally well disposed toward industry policy based on tariffs for national development reasons, in practice the structure of tariffs that arose in Australia seems more to have been determined by governments responding to private interest, public choice style pressures. The application of economic techniques of analysis by such bodies as the Industries Assistance Commission would appear to bear this out, and much of the structure and focus of many of the measures were the results of political pressures rather than well-targeted assistance.
