In his 1962 Ely Memorial Lecture to American Economic Association, Jacob Viner ventured to address place economist in history. His lecture, he explained, was not designed to deal with influence economists for good or evil; its subject matter was better described by tide which he had initially thought but eventually rejected, Why has economics always had a bad press? (Viner, 1963,1991, pp. 226-7). The contributors to two volumes under review (King and Lloyd, 1993; James et al., 1993), would have done well to have read this informative piece before jumping to defence economics or, to be precise, a particular branch economic thinking. However, given its age, thirty years at time writing, it is probably beyond kin most contributors even though it was published in prestigious American Economic Review and its author for over twenty years was editor Journal Political Economy Part value Viner's piece for economist-contributors in these two volumes is its consolatory nature. Few contemporary critics economic rationalism have gone as far as Carlyle by asserting of all quacks that ever quacked, political economists are loudest, going to describe their output as pig philosophy and their subject matter as the dismal science. Nor as yet have economic rationalists been described in public as more to be dreaded than plagues Egypt inflicted by Moses, though some critics economic rationalism approach views a nineteenth century reformer who described economists as the pests society and persecutors poor. Literature has not been kind to economists. Dickens, Kingsley, Shelley and Wordsworth and at least one Bronte sisters regarded practitioners political economy with a jaundiced eye. Even Walter Bagehot, that famous second editor Economist, and than a dabbler in science himself, proclaimed real Englishman in his secret soul was ever sorry for death a political economist; he is much likely to be sorry for his life. Fortunately, newspapers and weeklies, including Economist, do print obituaries deceased economists, and even offer some occasional praise for their lives, despite difficult nature their labour. Viner's concluding paragraph was a little optimistic. Confining himself at this stage, appropriately, to American economist, he stated: On whole however--or, with reliance rather promiscuous averaging than promiscuous aggregating, I should perhaps say on average--the American economist has been dealt with fairly by American public. It has laughed at us at times, because we do not always speak with a single voice and because despite many years sad experience to contrary some us persist in operating as if we can forecast But these are appropriate objects for moderate laughter. (Viner, 1963,1991, p. 246) For Australia, Bruce McFarlane and I reported a proclivity to write economics which far outstripped that Canada (Groenewegen and McFarlane, 1990, p. 3 and n.1), a sign either incipient masochism or foolhardy heroism. Our history also showed that many these antipodean economic writers were critical conventional economics in variant imported British textbooks or, eventually, in ex-cathedra statements economic professors when these were appointed to early universities. Australia is no exception to a history bad press for economists and wide criticism economic policy pronouncements. In particular, people have to be blind or totally isolated from society if they fail to realise that from late 1980s especially, economists have hardly been flavour month in Australian media and have been widely condemned as either bearers bad tiding, or as midwives through wrong policy advice in inducing hardships and sacrifices arising from Australia's continuing economic decline and its associated gradually rising unemployment levels. …