Reviews

'A work of this nature has until now been generally regarded as too great a challenge, too inscrutable a matter to deal with in any comprehensive way, too mysterious in its many parts to give adhesion or structure to. All those things have a real element of truth. But the challenge has now been brilliantly overcome by one of the very few scholars who could possibly do it using in all cases primary sources. As such a great gap in our history has been filled.'His Hon. Judge Peter McCusker, in launching the book.
'Keith Hancock has provided an exhaustive and fascinating account of wages policy in just over 700 pages. Despite the sheer volume of detail which is covered by the book, it is remarkably easy to read and is written in clear prose which is accessible to those readers without a background in economics. Perhaps the most significant lesson which emerges from the book is that the issues at the heart of the debate over wage policies remain as relevant today as they were during the first four decades of the Commonwealth of Australia.'Russell Lansbury, University of Sydney, in The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 24 (4)