Editor’s note: In the middle of a global commodities boom, the big spending Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam sensationally cut Australia’s high import tariffs by 25 per cent in response to rising inflation pressures. The Australian Financial Review’s chief political correspondent, Maximilian Walsh, who died this week, portrayed the move as a break in Australia’s – and Labor’s – protectionist history. Walsh later became less approving as the Whitlam government’s economic strategy fell apart in 1974. This is his story from July 29, 1973.