Australia’s history of economic reform is not a glorious one. Our federation was cobbled together after the Left opposed it because they wanted to protect state-sponsored industry at a state level. It was only a “dirty” deal between the Free Traders and the Protectionists, in which Protectionists agreed to free trade among the colonies while Free Traders agreed to protectionist policies outside those colonies.
From this point, it was mostly downhill. The Australian settlement had three key pillars: a white Australia policy; protected industries behind a tariff wall; and centralised wage fixing. Each had long-term deleterious impacts on Australia and its people.
