the great pj keating..., page-9

hob, are you joking!!! >"..... I'm buggered if I understand what he's getting at there. How many of his self proclaimed unique reforms changed behavior? Did floating the dollar change behavior, did giving the Reserve Bank those powers change behavior? ...."

The floating of the dollar was a key policy in exposing the Australian economy to international competition. Competition changes behavior and it has changed the way Australian businesses and workers behave. Tariff reform is another one. How do you behave when you buy a consumer good when you are given the choice of a wider range of reasonably priced goods - some Australian made and some imported? How did the Australian worker respond to the likely loss of a job when what he produced met the competition of lower taxed imports? How many Australian businesses moved their operations overseas to export platform countries in response to tariff reductions? The Hawke Keating era is widely recognized as one which transformed the Australian economyand the behaviour of the people of which it is comprised.