ABSTRACT
This chapter charts the rise of ‘entrepreneurial government’1 and the 1990s market reform agenda in Australia, culminating in structural shifts within the State, epitomised by Kennett’s Victorian ‘contract state’. It then discusses three fundamental assumptions underlying governance in the neoliberal or market state: beliefs in small government, in public choice theory as an explanatory framework, and beliefs in the efficacy of the free market. At the state level, reforms are evident across Australia. One state that has advanced apace with these reforms is Victoria, under the Kennett Liberal government—swept to power in 1992 and re-elected in 1995 against the dominating issue of Labor’s economic mismanagement. The shift to entrepreneurial government and the market state reflects and draws on the dominant paradigm of economic rationalism, illustrating Australia’s interconnectedness with similar reforms and shifts internationally—especially in New Zealand, Canada, the USA and the UK.
