For political watchers interested in how our economy shapes our nation, its culture and values, the Howard years will go down as the great Australian drift.

Five years ago in the lead-up to the 2001 election I painted a picture of two political parties grappling for a vision. They were flailing around in the dark looking for a way to take Australia forward. There was a policy vacuum as a great chasm had opened up between the worldview of Canberra's policy elite and the electorate. There was a standoff between those who believed free markets were the only way forward and a wider public who simply did not share that view. It was not an argument, as the policy elites insisted, between the educated and the uneducated. It was a debate about values and worldviews.

The divide had begun with the economic reform era. A consensus emerged among the Canberra policy elite about how to reform the Australian economy. It was to slash tariffs, dismantle centralised wage fixing and float the currency. As the rhetoric of competition, free markets and efficiency rained down, it was not just economic policy that was being asked to change. The nation's old economic system, known as the Australian Settlement, had been the foundation of Australian culture. It was the basis of our unique egalitarian ethos, the cornerstone of the ‘she'll be right’ attitude, and what some call mateship.