The purpose of this Dialogue – convened by the Robert Menzies Institute with the support of Asialink - was to take stock of Australia’s current moment in history by evaluating Australia’s present policy challenges against those of approximately seventy years ago, when the Menzies government was in office and contending with the onset of the Cold War. [...] Against this geopolitical backdrop Australian governments will have to recast the management of the Australian economy in order to make the most of new technologies, deftly exploit Australia’s natural comparative advantages, and safeguard the on-going material well-being of Australians despite the heightened possibility of international shocks and crises. [...] The Liberals were also motivated by an acceptance that the world had changed irreversibly as a result of the Second World War and that a new plan for Australia’s economic and social development was required in order to find security and prosperity in the second half of the twentieth century. [...] To quote Menzies in 1958: There are periods in the history of the world, periods of flux, periods of movement, periods of great social change or upheaval, or the aftermaths of great wars, in which people look abroad, and begin to say, ‘I should like to make a life in a new world and in a new place’. [...] In this context the nearest allegory to Australia’s present strategical position is that of the early 1950s, when the new government of Robert Menzies grappled with the task of preparing Australia for a potentially imminent third world war whilst also overseeing the far-reaching reorganisation and modernisation of the Australian economy.
- Pages
- 44
- Published in
- Australia
