Hawke led"clearly Australia's best post-war government",a former secretary of the Australian Treasury,now outgoing chairman of NAB,Ken Henry,said on Friday.
"Under Hawke's leadership,Australia was able to be transformed from a closed,inward-looking inflexible economy into a really outward looking one,one of the most flexible economies in the world. How quickly that happened,it's just staggering."
By 1983,governments around the world had begun programs of economic liberalisation,including Margaret Thatcher's England and Ronald Reagan's United States.
Doing the same here was always going to be more problematic,given our"draconian"and"rigid"labour laws,Henry said.
"The centralised wage indexation system that we had was so rigid that opening the economy up - and being able to do it in a way that didn't completely traumatise the economy and society - that was the biggest challenge and I really doubt that anybody else could have done it."
Hawke immediately called unions and business together to negotiate the Prices and Incomes Accord,under which workers would accept real wage cuts in return for increases to the"social wage",through tax relief and payment boosts.