The Campbell Committee and the origins of ‘deregulation’ in Australia

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe 1981 Australian Financial System Inquiry, known as the Campbell Committee, is widely seen as the start of the reform movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Accounts of its origins have been dominated by a debate about which policy actor can take credit. This paper utilises cabinet and Reserve Bank archives to reassess the origins of the Campbell Committee. The inquiry had its origins in an earlier attempt by the Whitlam government to take federal control of the regulation for non-bank financial institutions and the building society crisis of the mid-1970s. In its response to these political and economic challenges we can identify the moment in which the Fraser cabinet turned towards market-based reform. The political decisions made in the context of crisis set the path for regulatory change in subsequent decades, particularly in the area of prudential regulation, where we have seen regulatory consolidation and expansion rather than ‘deregulation’.