Just wondering for question 26 in the long response did you guys end up talking about microeconomic reforms such as financial and labour market deregulation and tariff reform. And then talk about the macroeconomic plocies? Because I felt like macroeconomic polocies didn't really have an affect on Australias consistent economic growth early on, but it has kind of in the past 10 years especially since the gfc and slowing down of China.
Yes, that was one of the key things you needed to mention. The question had a focus on assessing the importance of macroeconomic policies in generating growth, and if you were to say it wasn't particulary effective during a period of high growth, it's also assumed you would expand to explain WHY it was ineffective on a fundamental level - Eg. Macroeconomic policies generated neglibile growth during the mining boom era's due to the boom in commodity prices (valuation effect) in conjunction with China's inelastic demand for Australian commodities. In the stimulus it mentioned something about how some of Australia's growth periods were due to luck, and what this refers to is how external factors in which the Australian economy has little control over have affected on our level of economic growth - This was one of the cases.
A lot of people had prepared macro essays with a focus on internal balance (growth, u/e and inflation), and when people saw that the question was focused on growth, a lot of people disregarded their inflation paragraphs. Whilst growth was the focus of the essay, if you wanted to push yourself towards that upper band 6 range, you would include how the RBA's effective management of monetary policy in maintaing price stability has faciltated much of the growth - This is established on the basis that stable inflation is a prerequisite for growth and is necessary to promote business/consumer confidence & spending. For fiscal policy, you can also talk about how it has had an increasing influence on growth as the Australian government restructures it to have a higher focus on boosting incusive growth through human capital investment by switching from a welfare to a social investment model.
In terms of microeconomic policies, you could argue how the deregulation of the financial system has generated much of the growth Australia has experienced through high levels of foreign investment investment (as demonstrated in our high levels of NFL) as the Australian economy is known as a net capital importer. You could also extend your argument to show how structural reform during the era of trade liberalisation has improved our allocation of resources as we transition to a service orientated economy - Especially considering how the composition of service orientated jobs have been increasingly prominent in facilitating our growth.