It was the transformative decade: radical economic reform, takeover splurges, spectacular busts, the rapid acceleration of Australia’s Asian engagement, and emergence of more companies ready to take on the world.
The 1980s “was a time when things actually happened,” says Ralph Evans, a former head of Austrade.
And if one word defines the decade, it’s “big″. There were big deals, big corporate collapses, big tax evasion (or “bottom of the harbour” schemes), the big sharemarket crash, big economic reform, and big, painful adjustments – remember Paul Keating’s “banana republic” and recession “we had to have”?
