By Damien Murphy
The words One Nation have their own resonance in 2017 but 25 years ago they were chosen by Paul Keating as the name of his economic package to repel Fightback!, then opposition leader John Hewson's agenda for tax reform and spending cuts.
With its emphasis on micro-economic measures, One Nation was not the easiest "nation-building" manifesto to sell, and within months it was unravelling, with finance minister Ralph Willis advising the cabinet that "the task of vetting new policy and savings to achieve a result that is consistent with One Nation commitments is indeed most formidable [given] weaker-than-expected" performance in most areas.
One Nation's micro-economic reforms inevitably advanced longer-term government objectives.
A "stocktake" of reforms included increasing competition in telecommunications; remodelling Australia Post on retail and self-services lines; relaxing restrictions on ownership and content in broadcasting; "rationalisation" of land use restrictions in national parks and nature reserves; easing of mining industry access procedures and foreign investment guidelines, and a renewed privatisation program.
The Keating cabinet contemplated a boost to the textile, clothing and footwear industries. Credit: Jessica Hromas
Many of the proposals – advanced by officials as much as by politicians – did not immediately go ahead
Ending the ban on new uranium mines, for example, adopted by the Labor Party in 1982, was among reforms offered as part of this "stocktake", but it took John Howard to do it.
By August, the cabinet was briefed on what specific privatisation projects were likely to gain the greatest financial benefit: Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, Federal Airports Corporation, Australian and Overseas Telecommunication Corporation, Snowy Mountains Engineering Corporation and Australian Defence Industries.
The previous Hawke government had very much trashed what remained of Australia's textile, clothing and footwear industries on the altar of abolishing tariffs, but with unemployment climbing the Keating cabinet contemplated a "reverse ferret" by using the TCF sector to stimulate jobs in regional centres.
Then opposition leader John Hewson and members of his frontbench during question time on August 18, 1992. Credit: National Archives of Australia
By February 1993, that idea was quashed: "There must surely be a query over any plan to attract – via subsidies – new entrants to an industry which has a demonstrated capacity for being unable to match international standards of competitiveness".
That month, too, treasurer John Dawkins sought to defer the introduction of the superannuation guarantee levy – intended to encourage employers to provide a minimum level of superannuation support to employees – for six months.
Then prime minister Paul Keating during question time in March 1992. Credit: National Archives of Australia
By December Dawkins joined Willis in telling the cabinet that the coming year would be "severely limited' given the continuing demands of deficit reduction and the likely call for "significant additional outlays in high priority areas".
Those outlays included the seemingly intractable problem of unemployment and new, uncertain demands associated with policy responses to native title claims.
Former federal treasurer John Dawkins at the National Press Club in 1993.Credit: Mike Bowers
This would be one of Dawkins' last submissions to the cabinet: he resigned the following February, one of the first of the senior survivors from the Hawke years to go, disillusioned with the political compromises that had eroded prospects of the return to surplus he had promised.