ABSTRACT
Neoliberalism maintains that the path to wealth creation requires governments to get out of the way of the ‘wealth creators’ by removing regulations that constrain business, and by lessening their tax burden. By the 1960s the neoliberal narrative had many adherents, but it remained at the edges of economic policy. Up until early 1980s the Australian economy had been regulated through policies such as trade protection, restricted migration and centralised wage fixing through conciliation and arbitration. In the second half of the 19th century, public schools in the various Australian colonies were established to cater for working-class children whose families could not afford private education. So, by the 1970s Australia was moving to an age of mass secondary education. Neoliberalism has become and remained the dominant educational narrative largely because it is sustained by a number of subtle but powerful strategies and techniques. The neoliberal environment has spawned a panoply of consultants and think tanks to consolidate its ‘knowledge base’.
