On the Monday morning 40 years ago that the Australian dollar was freed to be priced by supply and demand in the foreign exchange market rather than by government edict, The Australian Financial Review editorialised that the new Labor government’s economic policy was more sane and rational than the most optimistic of observers could have predicted.

With one momentous decision, wrote political correspondent Gregory Hywood, the Hawke-Keating government had set itself on a course of financial deregulation contrary to the Labor Party’s traditional anti-market ethos. It was, as the Financial Review’s headline put it, “A brave new world”.