There was an irony in the very public occasion of Margaret Thatcher's grand funeral procession in London last week. This was, after all, a political leader who infamously declared, ''There is no such thing as society.'' Few figures have done more in office to hollow out the public realm while celebrating all that was private.

As Australians, we are fortunate to have been spared the social brutality of Thatcherism. But Lady Thatcher's symbolic power in Australia as the heroine of free market economics and liberal conservatism remains potent. Her Australian admirers regard her as a paragon for transforming society in the image of market efficiency.

Thatcherism wasn't the only way to do reform, of course. There was an alternative. We often forget that Australia managed to liberalise its economy in a very different way to Britain under Thatcher. As economist Tim Harcourt has reminded us, whereas the Iron Lady did it with confrontation, Bob Hawke did it with consensus.

During the Hawke-Keating years, economic reforms were carried out with the co-operation of the labour movement, as symbolised by the Accord with the ACTU. Wage restraint by Australian workers was rewarded with a ''social wage'' - with boosts in the public provision of health, education and training, not to mention the introduction of superannuation. This was the crowning achievement of Labor social democracy during the 1980s and '90s: ensuring that market liberalisation happened in a civilised manner.