The term economic rationalism had appeared in economic writings from the 1960s, sometimes in association with the theories of the German economist Max Weber. In the precise sense as defined above, however, it first appears in Australia in 1979. Surprisingly, it appears in a discussion of the agricultural policy of the Australian Labor Party:
In Britain the concept was labelled Thatcherism, after the economic policies advocated by Margaret Thatcher (b.1925) as UK prime minister 1979–90. We spell out these policies in the Australian Oxford Dictionary at the entry for Thatcherism: ‘they included a reliance on the workings of the free market, reduction of income taxation and public spending, privatisation of previously nationalised industries, and emphasis on individual responsibility and enterprise in reaction to the collectivism and corporatism of previous decades.’ Thatcher’s economic policies were also carried through in the USA, but instead of being called Thatcherism they were given the name Reaganomics, after Ronald Reagan (1911–2004), president of the US 1981–89.
Australia resisted borrowing the terms Thatcherism and Reaganomics, and instead developed its own term, economic rationalism. By 1981, the term economic rationalist had appeared to describe an advocate of economic rationalism. Here is Paul Keating berating the government in parliament on 28 April 1981:
Other recent terms of this kind include: negative gearing ‘reducing a tax liability by making some interest payments on an investment tax deductible’ (1984); enterprise agreement ‘a work contract between employers and employees at a particular workplace’ (1986); enterprise bargaining ‘the process by which employers and employees develop a work contract for a particular workplace’ (1987); salary sacrifice ‘a financial scheme whereby part of an employee’s pre-tax salary is paid into a superannuation fund etc.’ (1988).
