On the eve of the 1983 Federal election, Bob Hawke got an endorsement which might have surprised him. Well, maybe not quite an endorsement, but at least a tick to say that there seemed to be no compelling reason for him not to become the next prime minister of Australia.

It was the editorial in The Australian Financial Review, the newspaper which for more than 20 years had been a lone, consistent voice in the media calling for fundamental economic reform in Australia based on free markets, cuts in industry subsidies and tariffs, financial deregulation and smaller government.