aim. The ‘white Australian’ policy in practice had
the effect of demoralising them.
Only slowly, beginning in the 1960s, did
Aborigines win equal rights. An Aborigine lead-
ership emerged able to organise effective protest
movements and focus demands on wage issues,
discrimination and land rights. Gough Whitlam,
when he came to power in December 1972,
broke with tradition by paying attention to the
needs of the Aborigines, promising schools for
them and the protection of their land rights
against mining companies that wished to exploit
the mineral wealth below. The companies’ desire
to extend exploration in this way pitted profit,
national production and wealth against the rights
of the Aborigines. The following year another
well-intentioned effort led to the establishment of
a National Aboriginal Consultative Committee.
The improvement in Aborigine welfare has
brought abuses into even sharper relief.
Discrimination remained rife in Australia in the
early 1990s. The Aborigines, denied good health
care, housing and education, were trapped; high
unemployment added to their misery, to the
problems of crime and alcohol abuse. Australians
were shocked by a report that more than a
hundred Aborigines had died locked up in police
cells since 1980. As recently as 1992 one of the
commissioners investigating these deaths found it
necessary to say, ‘We as a community have to
change our attitude toward Aborigines. We have
to recognise them as a distinct people who were
dispossessed of this continent and deal with them
with respect.’ Racism could not be obliterated
overnight. But white Australia was not alone in
confronting what in the 1990s was now one of
the major causes of war and bloodshed elsewhere
in the world. The task of raising the standards
of a minority who had for decades lived in or
close to destitution was a formidable one. The
Australian Labor government in 1992 unveiled
another scheme to improve the educational,
housing and health provisions for Aborigines and,
above all, to ensure better treatment by the police
and courts. White Australians would be obliged
to consult with representatives of Aborigine
groups about measures and actions that affected
them.
The boom of the 1980s began to overheat in- But despite economic worries Bob Hawke
led Labor to a fourth successive victory in federal
elections in 1990. Labor had been following a
market-economy philosophy, reducing protection
for Australia’s industries, raising interest rates and
striving to keep money supply under control. Hit
by a recession that showed no sign of lifting, and
faced with another election in 1993, the Labor
Party changed its leader in December 1991. Bob
Hawke was dropped and his long-time treasurer
(finance minister) and political rival Paul Keating
became prime minister. Far from changing direc-
tion, Keating announced the government would
move with even greater determination to make
industry more efficient, abolish tariffs and help
business with tax breaks, while keeping govern-
ment expenditure under tight control.
In the early 1990s Australia suffered badly from
the recession in the West, with an unemployment
rate of 10 per cent. The growth of the south-east
Asian economies of Indonesia, Thailand and
Malaysia did not provide an immediate cure to
unemployment as Australian business increasingly
relocated industry where the markets were and
where labour was cheap. In March 1993 Keating
narrowly won another term for Labor against the
expectation of many observers that the severe
recession would cripple his chances of re-election.
By the 1990s Australia was a sophisticated cos-
mopolitan culture. With more than 30,000 mil-
lionaires it was hardly classless, but ‘class’ had
hitherto been based on the wealth of the self-
made man, not on birth to high station. But that
would change as wealth was inherited. The
Australians were conscious of great changes to
come. Industry and industrial exports would have
to play an ever increasing role in the economy.
The traditional export markets of Europe and the
US retained their importance but the new, rapidly
expanding markets lay in Asia, where nearly half of
Australia’s exports now went. Australia could no
longer afford to ‘fight against the reality of its own
geography’, to quote Gareth Evans, Australia’s
dynamic foreign minister. Japan was the model for
effective, advanced industrial organisation. Yet
Australia is not an Asian country: the majority of
its people are of European origin, and its majority