ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that Jackson Report’s essence is founded on two sets of assumptions. The first of these relates to the debate over Third World development and underdevelopment — specifically with regard to strategies for the eradication of poverty. The second set of assumptions relates to Australia’s role in world affairs — particularly the question of Australia’s relations with the Third World and most notably with its immediate regional neighbours. The policy recommendations that flow from a reading of Australia’s international economic relations suggestive of the process of marginalisation are very similar to those recommended in the Jackson Report for LDC. Structural adjustment is really about developing countries ‘putting their economic houses in order’ in a manner similar to the desire which seems to preoccupy many Western governments in the 1980s. The rationale of adjustment is its supposed facilitation of export led growth.
