The Prime Minister has been widely praised for this week’s address at the National Press Club, in which he set out a plan for workplace reform that immediately drew comparisons with Bob Hawke’s Prices and Incomes Accord.

It’s a comparison the PM is uncomfortable with; and rightly so, because nothing he announced on Tuesday bears any resemblance to Hawke’s signature economic reform. For a start, there was no role for business in the Accord; it was an agreement struck between the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Labor Party, before Hawke won the 1983 election.