This is because Marxist and free market inspired approaches tend to integrate economic theory with ideological outcomes concerning how society should be arranged, regardless of the actual impact on people’s every day lives.  However, the importance of economic policy cannot be overstated because it is has immense potential for social action in contributing to people’s well-being.  It cannot be said that economic policy in Australia has always being orientated toward securing people’s well been and will necessarily be so in the future.

Since the time of the great gold rushes of the 1850s Australian prosperity has always been derived from the trading position and demand for natural mineral resources and agricultural products, such as wheat and wool.  From the turn of the twentieth century up until the 1980s, Australian domestic employment depended on a domestic industrial base underwritten by tariff protection and by control over the inflow and outflow of capital.  The economic viability of having a protected economy was underwritten by demand for its primary resources be they agricultural products or commodities.

Australians endured a great deal of pain as their country undertook the radical transition from the 1980s up until the early twenty first century from a protected economy to a free trade one.  This transition has resulted in employment growth now being generated by the services sector in which over a quarter of the workforce are in non-standard (i.e. non-full-time) work.  Flexible employment patterns coupled with high credit debt has created a high degree of uncertainty which bedevils Australian society.  

It is therefore somewhat unsettling that the fundamental fact remains that Australia’s economic viability and prosperity is still derived from its primary exports (particularly minerals) despite all the economic change which has occurred.  Perhaps this situation need not and never will change.

Regardless of the fundamentals which underpin Australian economic viability, economic policy is still vital in contributing to people’s well-being.  For this reason Social Action Australia will focus on the positive-sum approach to economic development.  This approach is conceptualization in which economic gain is measured by the extent to which the benefits of economic growth are transferred to society.  The positive-sum approach will be the commencing reference point from which Social Action Australia will explore how economic policy could be orientated toward social democratic outcomes.