TUCKED away somewhere in my files is a piece of paper which says that I passed Economics 1 and Economic History at Melbourne University many moons ago.
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So many that what I learnt then has given me no background knowledge to comprehend current global and local economics.
However, thanks to George Megalogenis, I'm now beginning to understand why the dollar was floated and a whole lot more about the economy generally.
Megalogenis is the presenter of Making Australia Great: Inside Our Longest Boom (ABC, Tuesday).
Episode One covered the Menzies era and I think it was in those years when there was a newspaper headline – more jobs than unemployed.
Those were heady days for Australia.
Industry protected by high tariffs and everyone doing very nicely thank you.
It continued up until the Whitlam years where the government's social welfare spending - health, university fees, education and so on dependant on the good times lasting, but then came the oil crisis, unemployment rose, and we all know how the Whitlam years ended.
Fraser wasn't much better, although his treasurer John Howard would have liked to make changes, but they didn't happen until Keating became treasurer under Hawke and they were revolutionary, the most revolutionary part being of course the floating of the dollar.
We left Episode One with the greed and wealth of the 80s, before the “recession we had to have”.
Now the way I've written this it all sounds very dry, but it wasn't at all.
Megalogenis made it all quite fascinating with his clips of the day, the music of the period and the interviews with the major players, Hawke, Keating and Howard.
He made economics fun and it's a great show.
Watch.
ANOTHER documentary that I've found fascinating is Prime's Australia: The Story of Us.
A potted history which reveals the most amazing stories and people.
Having worked in television I was staggered at how Channel Seven managed to cover the 1956 Olympic Games only a few months after television had come to Australia and with no knowledge of outside broadcasts.
Unbelievably a bloke from radio was in charge of the whole broadcast and they had just three cameras – three cameras!
What I don't like about the program are the actors and entertainers, Dannii Minogue, Rebecca Gibney etc trying to be profound on what the history means to us, but otherwise it's good.
