This chapter examines the sustaining role of business cooperation in a small, remote economy, and the rich sources of social capital. It compares the differing pattern of business across the colonies and between city and bush, and examines the growth of firms in manufacturing. The rapid mid-century expansion in the Australian colonies provided opportunities and challenges for business. The pastoral boom that began in the 1830s and the gold rush of the 1850s motivated rapid increases in exports, immigration, per capita incomes, and transportation. The chapter interrogates major public forms of enterprise, and addresses the question of Aboriginal enterprise. Finally, the chapter investigates an important comparative question, the degree to which Australian enterprise shared in the movement towards a more scientific and generalisable approach to the practice of management that was starting to take hold in several nations towards the end of the 19th century, particularly the United States, Britain and Japan.

The Australian colonies evolved a government-centred model of infrastructure provision that was novel and, by the standards of the times, reasonably effective in supplying a broad range of infrastructure services. This chapter surveys existing interpretations and explanations of the role government played in infrastructure development in the Australian colonies, especially rural rail, providing explanations that blend efficiency, path dependence and, ultimately, vulnerability to rent seeking. By international standards, the Victorian commission model was an important innovation, giving rise to Andre Metin's famous descriptor, 'socialism without doctrine'. As with transport, the economic and social case for investment in communications sprang from the 'tyranny of distance'. The history of rail in the 19th century shows considerable vacillation between government and private roles; thus, some explanation is needed of why the public ownership model, even if initially contingent and accidental, 'stuck' and spread in the Australian colonies.

The 19th-century Australian labour market was defined more than anything else by the issue of labour scarcity. This chapter examines the implications of scarcity for the Australian labour market from the later years of the convict period through to Federation in 1901. It first focuses on free migration to the colonies. Despite relatively high wages, early 19th-century free migration remained relatively low, largely because of the cost of migration. Although migrants were increasingly attracted to Australia because of the gold rushes, the colonies nevertheless needed to implement extensive subsidies to attract suitable immigrants. Next, the chapter explains wages and skills. Although the majority of Australian workers had little employment security, a sizable minority, particularly in the tertiary sector, worked for employers with well-developed internal labour markets. Finally, the chapter explains labour market regulation and union activity. Unions were relatively small and inactive until the passage of legislation protecting their strike funds in the 1870s and 1880s.