Lee Kuan Yew said that in 1980.
With the hair pulling and forelock tugging and the Australian think tank anus scratching now in process over manufacturing decline, the predicition is as valid as it was in 1980.
Singapore opened its economy while Australia is considering closing it by the weight of comments by prospective white trash of Asia on Ozpolitic.
The problem with Australia is unrestrained capitalism causing the boom - bust cycles. Australian governments do not manage the economy. The eyes of the leaders light up when capital comes flowing in but they don't see the consequences of the following bust.
http://www.afr.com/news/politics/the-poor-white-trash-of-asia-a-phrase-that-chan... Quote:They were words that stung Bob Hawke into action and helped transform the Australian economy.
Former Singapore prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who died on Monday, famously warned in 1980 that Australia was destined to become the "poor white trash" of Asia if it didn't open up its economy.
The words were perhaps portentous in their own way, like former prime minister Paul Keating's 1986 remark about the dangers of Australia living beyond its means and becoming a "banana republic", which shook sharemarkets ahead of the global recession in 1987.
The comment from Lee, a constant critic of Australia, who was then transforming Singapore into an advanced manufacturing and services economy – from a mudflat to a city state – was taken on board by then Labor opposition shadow minister and former ACTU leader Bob Hawke, who would oust Malcolm Fraser in 1983.
"Lee Kuan Yew was a great friend of Australia, if at times an outspoken one," Hawke writes in The Australian Financial Review today.
"I thought he was right, and his harsh but fair comment helped galvanise my determination to undertake the reforms that would save us from that fate and set us on a better path."
Hawke called together political, industry and academic leaders for his much vaunted economic summit in 1983 in an effort to address Australia's economic woes.
Out of this grew the prices and wages accord with the ACTU to rein in a wages blowout. Hawke would accelerate the task of opening up the economy to competition by bringing down automotive and textile, clothing and footwear tariffs, embarking on asset sales, deregulating banking and floating the dollar.
Former Hawke government economic adviser Barry Hughes said of the Lee Kuan Yew comment that few in the political and economic world were "unaware of it".
"It was very widely circulated and it added piquancy to what we all knew had to happen," he said.
"At the time the Australian economy was unsustainable, and it was only going to become more so, until the reforms were implemented," he said.
"But ultimately the reforms would have come whether he made those comments or not.
"Of course, Singapore itself was undergoing an enormous development thrust at the time."
Lee would soften as he moved into his senior years, praising the Hawke-Keating-era economic reforms and Australian entrepreneurship, and even conceding he might have been a bit harsh with his "poor white trash" comment.
"There are words said sometimes in the heat of an argument which perhaps at the time was warranted; you have changed," he said on a visit to Australia in 2007.
Forum
Pages: 1 
