"Australia has regarded itself as a social democracy for as long as I can remember"
"Though some may recoil at the neoliberal label they associate primarily with the political right, recent history suggests the neoliberal system has been and will likely remain a bipartisan standard in Australia."
"...Where the classical liberals of the 19th century favoured a non-interventionist, laissez-faire approach to economic policy, the key aim of neoliberalism was to recognise that functioning markets must be actively created and maintained by an interventionist state. Neoliberal thinkers argued the chief role of government was to create and enforce the rules of the marketplace..."
"...The ideas of the Mont Pelerin Society entered the political mainstream most prominently in the 1980s under the governments of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Their policies included privatisation of government owned industries, extensive tax cuts, and creating more “flexible” labour markets by restricting the power of trade unions..."
"...the Hawke-Keating government was clearly guided by a neoliberal desire to expand the scope of the market. Neoliberalism in Australia would intensify under Coalition government of John Howard – a card-carrying member of the Mont Pelerin Society and prime minister from 1996 to 2007. He did this through continued privatisation of state assets and deregulation of the financial sector..."
