It has been 25 years since the last recession in Australia. This growth period can be divided into three distinct phases.

The first phase, from 1991 to the end of the decade, was hard-earned. It was driven by the surge in productivity from the economic reforms of the 1980s and early 1990s but left many people behind. The second phase, from 2003 to 2008, didn’t require as much effort. China set off the greatest mining boom in modern Australian history, and income flowed freely. But this proved to be a short phase in the long-growth period. It ended with the financial crisis.

Before the market-based reforms of the mid-1980s, Australia was one of the most regulated economies in the world, and the inflexibility of the system made it vulnerable to global setbacks. A collapse in Australian export prices would herald a deep recession.

History didn’t repeat itself at the end of this mining boom because the open economy was able to quickly tap a new source of growth through immigration. The reforms — initiated by the Labor governments of former prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating — gave up political control of the Australian dollar, interest rates and wages and removed the tariff wall. They were balanced with universal health care and a high minimum wage.

Subsequent conservative and Labor governments then adapted the program to immigration policy — and this explains the third phase of Australia’s remarkable 25-year run of growth. Since 2001, governments have largely let the market decide whom to bring into the country.