The Prices and Incomes Accord between the ALP and the ACTU was central to economic restructuring in the Hawke-Keating era, and is generally assumed to have been consensual and in the national interest. Yet, this was also the period vanguard neoliberalism in Australia — a project usually associated with the New Right. In my recent work I use Gramsci’s notion of the integral state to explore how trade unions were incorporated into neoliberalism, and how its components were detrimental to labour organisation. I also consider how this framework can help us understand the recent breakdown in political rule in both Australia and other advanced capitalist countries.

Elizabeth Humphrys is as a political economist and political sociologist at the University of Technology Sydney. Her latest research projects are on: neoliberalism and anti-politics; heat stress, climate change and work; and, the deaths of 35 workers when the West Gate Bridge collapsed in 1970. Her book How Labour Built Neoliberalism was released in 2019 with Brill’s Studies in Critical Social Sciences series (Paperback: Haymarket Oct 2019).