A Lady ahead of Her Time, page-62

That is more to do with the legacy of empire and dealing with it, the costs were too much after one too many wars, it also meant a huge strain from immigration that was exacerbated by the entrance into the EU. Let’s go there shall we - a failure waiting to happen with the UK, Germany and to a lesser extent France propping up countries financially and having open borders for financial migration on a huge scale. The strain on everything is huge. Wrt manufacturing that was almost dead when the union demands nearly killed it off in the seventies. That happens to all countries in he first world. Australia? Take away resources and what have you got that you manufacture? Submarines, cars? Bye bye. So much opportunity held back by he CFMEU et al.
The actual policies at the time via Thatcher were right for the country, only to be undermined by the same incompetents currently governing several nations like Australia and the US.