Full circle: Australian wage determination 1982-1984

This article, the third by the author for this journal, follows trends in Australia wage [vcing from December 1981 to mid-1984. It deals particulary with the effects of the Hawke Labour Government's economic policies as they have affected wage determination and attempts to assess possible future developments. Two previous articles in this journal outlined the operations of the systems of wage indexation which operated in Australia from April 1975 until July 1981 (Plowman 1978, 1982). These articles examined the changing political and economic context within which indexation operated, the 19 different National Wage Cases conducted over the period, the increasing pressures placed on centralised wage fixing, the 5 separate sets of guidelines which attempted to take account of prevailing circumstances, and the final breakdown of the system. The second article also examined the metal industry settlement of December 1981 which provided the benchmark for award adjustments in 1982. This article documents developments in the period following the Metal Industry Agreement of December 1981 to the middle of 1984. This brief period of some 2 ~ years witnessed attempts at "decentralisation", the imposition of the only explicit wages freez