Congratulations to Joan Beaumont for the publication of Australia’s Great Depression: How a nation shattered by the Great War survived the worst economic crisis it has ever faced (Allen & Unwin, 2022). In this wide-ranging account of the Great Depression in Australia, Beaumont shows how high levels of debt and the collapse of wool and wheat prices left Australia particularly exposed in the world’s worst depression. Threatened with national insolvency, and with little room for policy innovation, governments resorted to austerity and deflation. Violent protests erupted in the streets and paramilitary movements threatened the political order.