The recurrent education concept has enjoyed higher salience in Austral ia than in most countries outside Scandinavia since i t s appearance in the context of OECD's round of country papers which followed the Organisation's or iginal 'c lar i fying report ' (OECD, 1973; Duke, 1974). It found i t s way rapidly into the lexicon of education commission and committee reports which are a feature of modern Australian educational administration - and perhaps of i t s policy-making, though the link between ideas and action is problematic. The report which led to the creation of the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) Commission ( l a te r Council), and an attempt to a l t e r TAFE's Cinderella s t a t u s , took a par t icul a r ly bold stance, based on recurrent education, and a decade l a t e r wri ters are going back to the Kangan report as the most visionary yet prac t ica l of t h i s report ser ies (Kangan, 1974). Successive reports of three different Commissions which merged in the l a t e r seventies to become the Commonwealth Tert iary Education Commission (CTEC), l ike CTEC in i t s subsequent annual and t r i enn ia l repor t s , have frequently alluded to recurrent education as an appropriate s t ra tegy, and i t also featured in the terms of reference of the Williams Report deriving from a major Committee of Inquiry into Education and Training, though the resul t has been called a lost opportunity (Williams, 1979; Sommerlad, 1980).