Most editors of The Australian Financial Review have not been averse to penning a book or two during or after their reign. One such offering was called The Crisis in Australian Capitalism, written by Peter Robinson in 1978 when he was then writing for the Fairfax news weekly The National Times. Robinson had earlier been editor of the Financial Review and would eventually return to the paper.

His book was an insider’s account of the protection racket that infested the Australian manufacturing sector during the 1970s. It was Robinson who popularised the term “tariff bludger” to describe how some pockets of Australian manufacturing made fat profits because of high protection.