Dollar facts & fiction: debate

John Stone, “Floating the dollar: facts and fiction”:

The first draft of history, they say, is written by the journalists. It would be truer to say that it is written by the politicians and political advisers from whom most journalists obtain their copy. Given also the strong Labor Party affiliations of most Canberra press gallery journalists, the “history” that initially gets written is invariably weighted towards Labor’s version of events.

Source: Quadrant

David Uren:

Treasury backed the principle, but not the pace of change

Paul Keating and Bob Hawke are at loggerheads about who was primarily responsible for the float of the Australian dollar but they are both agreed it was over the strenuous objections of Treasury secretary John Stone.

The debate is personal and spiteful, but also revealing about the forces behind the great modernisation of the Australian economy that took place under the Hawke and Keating governments from 1983 to 1996.

Source: The Australian 

Paul Keating:

Bob Hawke has a very poor memory of the sequencing of all this; including my introducing the matter to him alone in May 1983.

I am trusting that his utterances on this subject arise from diminished memory of events 30 years ago, rather than from any express intention to diminish my role, central as it was, in this seminal event.

Source: The Sunday Telegraph