Unfinished Business

Abstract This article is about three phases in Australian trade policy: protectionism, unilateral liberalisation, and participation in regional trade liberalisation. Australia used to have one of the most protected economies in the world. The last dozen years have seen a radical transformation of Australian economic policy: Australia is in the process of becoming one of the most open economies in the world. The last five-to-ten years have also seen a related transformation of Australian foreign economic policy. This policy is now centrally concerned with promoting the process of international economic integration within the Asian region; particularly through the APEC process. Should Australia be pursuing ‘open regionalism’ in the Pacific? or promoting an Asia Pacific trading bloc? or concentrating on its own unilateral trade liberalisation? or using its energy to press for global liberalisation through the GATT? I argue that there remains a deep contradiction in the APEC process; that ‘open regionalism’ is in Australia's interests, and that the critical test of Australia's conversion to liberalisation will come in this third phase, in the future answers that it gives to these questions.