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Published by the Parliament of NSW and the University of SydneyVolume Three of a 3-volume set.Australia became a nation politically through the willingness of the existing colonies and their citizens to join together, ceding some of their powers in order to construct something better than the sum of those older political units. Yet the colonies did not disappear; they became autonomous States in the new Commonwealth of Australia. Consequently, to understand the political history of Australia it is not enough to know what happened in federal politics. Each State has had its own significant political history, often influencing developments in other States and at the centre. This work is a political chronicle of the most populous State, New South Wales, during the century since Federation, using the regular State elections as focal points. It fills in some of the important detail necessary to understand how modern Australia has become such a successful democratic nation. Volume One - 1920-1927Volume Two - 1930-1965Volume Three - 1968 to 1999This Third Volume surveys the transformation of NSW politics and society in the last third of the twentieth century due to technological changes, especially in world communications, and the rise of new political issues such as the environment and the women's movement. Television, of course, changed the nature of political campaigning, as did a thriving culture of public opinion polls, concentration on leadership 'image' at the expense of policy, and a new industry devoted to the manipulation of the media. More importantly, however, the nature of government economic management changed in response to worldwide pressures for conformity to a new model of smaller government, variously described by such terms as 'economic rationalism', 'managerialism' or 'market-orientation'. By the end of the century, however, there were some signs that this orthodoxy itself was being questioned.