The accord: an economic and social success story

From 1983, Australia operated an Incomes Policy - the Accord. Senator Peter Cook, Australian Industrial Relations Minister, gave a Centre for Economic Performance-sponsored public lecture on the Accord in June 1991. In view of the considerable worldwide interest in the Accord, Senator Cook''s lecture is reprinted as a Centre for Economic Performance Occasional Paper to reach a wider audience. Peter Cook looks at the ways in which the Accord process facilitated a major assault on the impediments to economic growth and social equity in Australia in the 1980s, and argues that economic management should be achieved by consensus policies supported by social wage and industrial policy measures rather than economic and social confrontation.