This was published 13 years ago
Modern Australia's template was being created, though few realised it
THIRTY years ago there was fighting in Afghanistan, a $29 billion resources boom was starting, the environmental movement was growing second teeth at Tasmania's Gordon-below-Franklin and China was emerging from socialist revolution to embrace limited capitalism.
Treasurer John Howard was pushing unsuccessfully for a mini-GST, a value-added tax on food, clothing and services.
Shareholders in the old order, who had controlled Australian life since Federation, were becoming exhausted.
Malcolm Fraser's cabinet appeared as tough as its leader, but 1980 records released today by the National Archives of Australia show his government often failed to act decisively.
The patrician prime minister from Victoria's Western District squattocracy belt won his third successive federal election in October. Still revered by many for his defeat of Gough Whitlam five years earlier, his divine right no longer counted and his expensive bullying, bludgeoning and cajoling attempts to stop the Australian team competing in the Moscow Olympics resulted in his first big public humiliation.
Big business mainlined on protection, subsidies and government regulation and unions remorselessly waged industrial war, but the end of tariffs loomed.
In Britain, Margaret Thatcher's iron fist might have divided a class-bound society even further, but former ACTU president Bob Hawke's byelection victory was the harbinger of a new life for Australia's moribund union movement.
Politically, the ALP remained in the post-Whitlam doldrums, although opposition leader Bill Hayden got within striking distance in the October vote.
The Coalition government set up a ''razor gang'' with the aim of cutting programs, selling government ventures such as Medibank and the Commonwealth Bank, reintroducing tertiary fees and merging new broadcaster SBS with the ABC, but Fraser squibbed on the harder asks. The election also saw Liberal leadership aspirant Andrew Peacock unsuccessfully challenge for the deputy's job, a move that eventually put John Howard in pole position.
Liberal ''dries'' under free-marketeer John Hyde met in Perth and established economic rationalism as an article of faith, alarming National Party colleagues raised on government largesse.
The old respect for politics was dying, too. Journalist Laurie Oakes's scooping of treasurer John Howard's budget speech would have been unthinkable a few years before.
The 1980 cabinet papers reflect the changed society.
In the years before, health and education had occupied much cabinet time, but as the 1970s closed modern political matters such as the economy and foreign affairs started to weigh more heavily.
Jim Stokes, the National Archives of Australia's consultant historian, said that internationally 1980 was a year of tensions and foreboding, while domestically the economy was travelling reasonably well, with inflation about 10 per cent and unemployment about 6 per cent.
''1980 was a year of transition, although not all the changes were readily discernible,'' Mr Stokes said.
Away from Canberra, Joh Bjelke-Petersen's Queensland Coalition retained government while Sydney's nasty ALP factional war achieved national prominence when photographs appeared of badly bruised left-wing NSW upper house MP Peter Baldwin, who was bashed at his Marrickville home.
Australia's population was 14,807,370, and the government was expanding immigration and refugee intakes. The year brought Australia's first test tube baby, Candice Reed, and women were permitted to become full members of surf lifesaving clubs.
Deborah Wardley won the right to fly a commercial passenger jet after a long court campaign and The Age's Ron Tandberg put airline company owner Reg Ansett in his place by drawing him saying there was no place for a woman in the cockpit.
ATMs appeared, prompting a strong campaign by bank unions to protect jobs.
At times Australia seemed strikebound by industrial action over Victoria's Loy Yang power station, live sheep exports and Queensland coalmine housing tax levies.
Metropolitan print journalists wanted more money to work with computers, and the notorious Builders' Labourers Federation action at Victoria's Loy Yang power station saw the union, and its infamous leader Norm Gallagher, join the year's royal commission roster.
Five volunteer firefighters died at Waterfall, south of Sydney, an extortionist's bomb exploded at Woolworth's Sydney Town Hall branch and the Turkish consul and a bodyguard were short dead in Sydney.
Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant film opened, Clive James's first biographical take, Unreliable Memoirs, appeared, as did Geoffrey Blainey's A Land Half Won.
And although Melbourne's Alan Jones won the World Formula 1 championship and Grant Kenny began his breakfast cereal packet career by winning junior and senior iron man titles, Yvonne Crawley's Wimbledon singles title was possibly the year's best news.