History with a soft focus

And Australia didn't have a banking crisis because Australian banks were better regulated than those overseas (as a result of disasters in the early 90s) and there was no housing crash. In fact, the most important thing the Australian government did (credit to Rudd) was to guarantee bank deposits to maintain confidence in the system.

Australia also managed to preserve its workforce. The result of the Howard industrial relations reforms was that a more "casualised" workforce was more flexible and able to work part-time when firms didn't have enough work. This preserved institutional capital so that when work became available again firms were able to reemploy and reengage without costs of retraining and reskilling.

But more than all of these, over the period from 1983 to 2007 Australian business had changed from being an inward-looking rent seeking clique to an outward looking, responsive flock, prepared to innovate and change to make a dollar. We don't make a living from feather-bedded domestic manufacturing, and that is a good thing.

We survived the GFC mostly because we had a flexible economy and a business class that was prepared to use that flexibility to readjust their businesses to find profit to replace what they'd lost. Yet this insight is completely lacking from Megalogenis' book.

I'd definitely recommend reading this book, if you have the time, but I'd take Hartcher's straight after. The Australian Moment fills in some of foreground through the personal histories of the participants, but it fails to accurately survey the background.

The last 30 years are still awaiting the definitive chronicler.