In the period under review, 1966–70, Australia was singularly free from the ’constant balance of payments worries’ of the 1950s and early 1960s. The problem of external balance – of finding enough foreign exchange to finance an ever-growing import bill – which, in the preceding two decades and indeed in many earlier periods of Australian economic history, had never been far from the centre of concern of Australian economic policy-makers, all but vanished, at least for the time being. On the contrary, towards the end of the period, Australia, to her own surprise, found herself embarrassed by a plethora of foreign exchange, in a small way paralleling the discomfiture of the major surplus countries, Germany and Japan,