LAUSR

aged thirty-two, to the consternation of more senior officials. He left the bureaucracy in 1950, stood unsuccessfully as a Labor candidate in the 1951 election and incurred the scrutiny of ASIO due to his progressive views about decolonisation in South East Asia. Burton earned an eminent academic reputation in the United Kingdom and United States in international relations and pioneered the development of peace and conflict studies. Despite rivalry and differences of policy, the mandarins of the post-war era were united by a moment in history. That moment required them to enlist their Keynesian expertise in the industrial, economic and demographic transformation of Australia. The fact that the Keynesian model had run its course by the early 1970s does not diminish the scale of their achievement. The Seven Dwarfs reminds us to treat with scepticism those claims of a 1980s golden age.