Maude Nificent#Auspol #NeoLiberalism #Hawke #Keating
@onekind has drawn my attention to a book by Liz Humphrys — How Labour Built NeoLiberalism … not having read the book yet, did find an interview with the author in Jacobin… an interesting snippet
<The other thing to remember is that prior to the Accord, the last time the ALP had been in government was under Gough Whitlam. His government found itself in the middle of an economic crisis. Since then, the Right has always accused Labor of being poor financial managers who can’t be trusted to run the country’s finances.
The Hawke–Keating period, on the other hand, is held up as one of the most successful periods of economic restructuring. The ALP relies on the success of that period to argue publicly that it is fit for government. That creates a problem for trade union leaders. They don’t want to disagree with this argument publicly, even if they think the Accord was a massive setback for the labor movement. Even people who were critical of the Accord feel compelled to say nothing in public or even to defend it.>
https://jacobin.com/2020/10/australia-labor-party-neoliberalism-accord
How Australia’s Labor Movement Helped Build Neoliberalism
In the US and UK, conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher kick-started neoliberalism. In Australia, however, it began in the 1980s with a fateful Accord introduced by Labor prime minister Bob Hawke and supported by Australia’s trade union leadership.