Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 27

By the end of the 1980s, Australia had begun winding back tariffs used to protect uncompetitive industries. It had also opened up the financial market, and allowed the Australian dollar to ‘float’ and find its own level of value on international exchange markets rather than being kept fixed at an artificial and government-maintained level.

The ‘closed shop’ era was over, and in the early 1990s, Australia experienced acute economic trauma during what economists glibly labelled the ‘structural readjustment phase’, a phase that included the worst recession of the postwar era. But Australia emerged from the recession ready to take advantage of a new period of economic expansion, prosperity and growth. Thanks to the various economic reforms introduced through the 1980s and 1990s, Australia surprised many by weathering the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s the best of any country in the region. It was also well placed to take advantage of the China boom of the 2000s, and sail serenely through the global financial crisis of 2008. (See Chapter 20 for more on the changes introduced through the 1980s, and their short-term effects.)