During the three short years of the Labor government of Gough Whitlam (1972-75), much was done to set Australia on a different path, in which attitudes towards race, minority groups, women, Aborigines, society's disadvantaged and the environment became diametrically opposed to those of Australians of a decade earlier. Truly, times had changed. Once the changes were in place, Australia removed the radical Whitlam Labor government from power, replacing it with the more conservative Liberal Government of Malcolm Fraser, perhaps for no other reason that to ensure the pendulum had not and would not swing too far the other way.

Ronald Reagan's election in the US in 1980 ushered in a new age of conservatism to the whole Western world that was embraced by the Baby Boomer generation. For many, particularly in America and Europe, they had tried to change the world in the 1960s; disillusioned, they gave up and went and had a good time in the 1970s. Now, in the 1980s, it was time to settle down, build a career and establish a lifestyle to which they would have no trouble becoming accustomed. Thus emerged what has become known as the Me! Generation of status seekers. 

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Around the turn of the decade, a flood of latter-end Baby Boomers were leaving Universities with degrees and entering the workplace, taking up prestigious office professions. It gave them high purchasing power, by which means they rewarded themselves with trendy, luxurious goods. These career focused high-flyers were known as Yuppies. The word is an acronym for young urban professionals (yup) or young upwardly-mobile professionals (yup). Their American counterparts, who were predominantly white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans, were called Preppies. The Preppy/Yuppy Look has long been associated with the sort of lifestyle enjoyed by the more wealthy of the previous generation. It was synonymous with golf club members, yacht owners and squash players. As Madonna said, they were, after all, "material girls (and guys) living in a material world", and when the ultimate high-flying yuppie, Gordon Gecko, declared "Greed is good" in the movie, Wall Street, he was simply verbalising their philosophy in life. These upwardly mobile young adults knew where they were going; the Preppy/Yuppy look was a clear statement that they were on their way. Thus, nerds became a hot commodity. Wealthy and brainy computer wizards like Stephen Wozniak and Bill Gates attained god-like status. So did movies like "Revenge of the Nerds", "Lucas", "Stand by Me", and "Peggy Sue Got Married". TV joined the nerd ranks with the hit series "Head of the Class". 

"If you've got it, flaunt it" and "You can have it all!" were watchwords. Binge buying and credit became a way of life and "Shop Til you Drop" the philosophy. Economists dubbed the Baby Boomers in the 1980s as the "splurge generation". Designer labels were everything, even (or especially) for children. Auctions of famous art works brought record prices. Early in the decade Picasso's 'Yo' brought 5.4 million. By 1987, Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' brought $39.9 million while 'Irises" brought $53.9 million dollars! In March 1990, in a night time art theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, thieves made off with twelve works of art, including paintings by Degas, Rembrandt, Renoir, and Vermeer, valued at $100,000,000. They were never recovered.

Collectibles were big in the 1980s. Smurf and E.T. paraphernalia, Cabbage Patch dolls, camcorders, video games (Nintendo, Pac Man, Game Boy), Rubik's Cube, Teenage Mutant Nija Turtles, and Barbies (now Hispanic, Black, Asian) were big. New innovations geared towards these high flyers included discount air fares, lite foods, aerobics, minivans and talkshows. In this decade of greed, Kermit the Frog didn't find it easy to be green, music went visual via the video clip, hospital costs rose, the world began losing people to AIDS, businesses consolidated further, and unemployment rose as executive salaries based on company profits went through the roof. Australia celebrated its 200th birthday, Gone with the Wind turned 50, ET phoned home, Australia became the first country to unbolt the America's Cup, the holy grail of yachting, from the clubhouse bar of the New York Yacht Club in 1983, and Communism began to falter.

By the 1980s, American culture had become so entrenched in Australia and many other westernised countries of the world, local cultural mores were being relegated to the backburner. Though Australians still made films, wrote and recorded songs and produced television shows, the trends in entertainment were now set by American culture and where it went, ours followed. Australian actors and recording artists adopted American accents, and like film makers, geared their output towards the international markets. It was as if the Australian cultural cringe of a few decades previous had returned, only this time it was not because of embarassment at what we were, but to gain acceptance in international markets (many would say that is the same thing). All but a handful kept their material very Dinky-Di Australian - Paul Hogan's "Crocodile Dundee" was a notable exception - their appeal was limited to the local market or to the niche arthouse market overseas. In music, television and cinema, we did as the Americans did. The Australia's film industry shifted its focus away from trying to make blockbuster movies for the mass world market, and moved towards arthouse productions, and making our facilities available for American film makers to use in the production of their films.

The 1980s was a prosperous and extremely active decade for the US film industry, and saw many box office hits. The films of Steven Spielberg and Gerge Lucas of the late 1970s had made moviegoing fashionable again, and the industry began to put a greater emphasis on producing mass-market blockbusters. The science fiction genre experienced a surge in popularity following the success of Star Wars. This is best exemplified by Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which shattered records for box office gross receipts and became the decade's biggest earner both in the United States and United Kingdom.

Television innovations and trends included anti-family sitcoms like "Roseanne" and "Married ... with Children"; tabloid TV with Oprah Winfrey and Sixty Minutes; stand-up comedy; info-tainment programmes, which brought documentaries back into vogue. It was the first decade of media superstars. Now regarded as an icon of the 1980s, Miami Vice (1984) redefined the cop show genre, combining film-like production values with MTV style music videos. Animation in the United States and elsewhere saw a dramatic improvement in production values and saw a resurgence of mainstream appeal, both in feature films and on television. Star Blazers, Voltron and Robotech helped to develop the first wave of organized anime fandom. Star Trek: The Next Generation, regarded by some as the pinnacle of the Star Trek series, made its syndicated debut in 1987.

The music of the 1980s is one of its most memorable aspects, as it encompased the over-the-top self-indulgence of the decade. The King of Pop Michael Jackson revolutionized music with his best-selling album Thriller. His mannerisms and trends were copied repeatedly, from the single-glove, to the various jackets he wore, and the now-famous moonwalk. In the United States, MTV was launched and music videos began to have a huge effect on the record industry. The first video aired was Video Killed the Radio Star by the British band The Buggles, and it proved oddly prophetic. The sounds of new technology, synthesizers and keyboards, along with drum machines, lent an electronic, distinct sound to many 1980s records.

In the 1970s, popular music began to split into sub-genres like coutry rock, heavy metal, folk rock. The trend continued in the 1980s, with even further fragmentation, until the main line became blurred. New Wave and Synthpop were developed by artists such as Duran Duran, Bananarama, and Tears for Fears, and became popular phenomena throughout the decade, especially early on. Thrash metal appeared and became an underground music sensation. A few of these acts, such as Metallica and Megadeth, managed to achieve mainstream exposure (especially during the early 1990s), and were frequently seen as alternatives to the poppier "glam metal" bands of the day. Extreme metal began and gained prominence in the underground. House music was a new development in dance music mid-way through the decade, growing out of the post-disco scene early in the decade and later developed into acid house, a harder form of dance often associated with the developing late 1980s drug culture. Hip hop and rap music debuted in the pop culture scene as early as 1979. The Hip hop scene evolved to become a powerful musical force, bringing with it several dance styles.

The combination of Nancy Reagan's restrained elegance and Princess Diana's love of fashion stimulated a return to opulent clothing styles. Power dressing was in. Madonna was a big influence on young fashion. Anne Klein, Perry Ellis, Donna Karan, and Calvin Klein were the "In" designers of the 1980s. Film continued to influence and inspire clothing. The Flashdance look had young and old in tank tops, tight-fitting pants or torn jeans, and leg-warmers.  Teens not wearing designer clothes opted for Michael Jackson's glove or Madona's fishnet stockings, leather, and chains. Older women wore the Out of Africa look popularized by Meryl Streep. Image won over reality and tanning salons thrived. 

On the business front, the 1980s began with double-digit inflation and by 1982, unemployment had reached 7.4%. During the decade, hostile takeovers, leveraged buyouts, and mega-mergers spawned a new breed of billionaire. Donald Trump in the US and Christpher Skase and Alan Bond in Australia iconed the meteoric rise and fall of the rich and famous. In Australia, the 1980s became the decade of the multi-national takeover, when locally owned and operated companies began to be bought out by multi-natonal players, their Australian operations being absorbed into giant international networks. Product ranges were globalised and, where possible, the labour-intensive tasks in manufacturing were withdrawn and given to countries with the lowest wage rates. Companies such as BHP, which had driven the Australian post-war industrial expansion, cut 25% of its steel workers, highlighting a general drop in business confidence and slowing expansion.

The effects of globalisation on industrialised nations like Australia was to take us into what the Prime Minister Paul Keating described as "the recession we had to have" in the early 1990s. At the time, most Australians thought he was just trying to make excuses for poor management on behalf of the Government, but time has shown he was dead right. The recession made Australians more competitive by forcing Australians to look beyond our square, reassess what they did, what they made and how they made it, and run their businesses more efficiently, thus ensuring survival in the global marketplace.

On a domestic level, the 1980s continued the trends of the 1970s and 1970s - more divorces, more unmarrieds living together, more single parent families. The family values taught to the Baby Boomers by their parents were all but forgotten; the two-earner family became the norm rather than the exception; more women went for management positions and got them, earned college and University degrees, married, and had fewer children. Worldwide, the 1980s was an era of tremendous population growth which, along with the 1970s and 1990s, was among the largest in human history, though in Australia population growth went against the world trend.

The role of women in the workplace increased. Continuing what had begun in the 1970s, more and more women in the English-speaking world took to calling themselves "Ms.", rather than "Mrs." or "Miss." A similar change occurred in Germany, with women choosing "Frau" instead of "Fräulein" in an effort to disassociate marital status from title. In most western countries, women began to exercise the option of keeping their maiden names after marriage; in Canada, legislation was enacted to end the practice of automatically changing a woman's last name upon marriage.

The universal voice of people power that had begun with the strains of the solitary voice of Bob Dylan in 1962 had become almost deafening by the 1980s. One of the greatest examples of people power in action in Australia occurred in 1983 when the same voice that had called for Australian troops to be withdrawn from the Vietnam War in the 1960s helped stop the building of a dam on Australia's last wild river in Tasmania's south-west wilderness area. 1272 people had been arrested by police, most charged with trespass and/or obstruction, of whom 447 were imprisoned for refusing to accept bail conditions. "Could you vote for a party that would destroy this?" screamed the headlines of the Merbourne Herard on 3rd March 1983, two days before a Federal election. Below the headline, across the breadth of page five, was Peter Dombrovskis's (1945-1996) now famous photograph, "Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River". That photograph and the extensive media coverage of the drama unfolding in the Tasmanian rainforests turned the tide of public opinion in the debate. The battle lasted four years and the river was eventually saved by a ruling of the High Court of Australia.

During the 1970s consumers got a taste of what was to come in terms of electronic gadgetry in the 1980s. Hi fi stereo went portable with the invention by Sony of its Walkman, which was an audio cassette player that clipped onto a belt and played high quality sound through button headphones. In the 1980s, the invention and release of the compact disc took Hi Fi audio reproduction, both in the home and on the run, to levels previously unknown. Just as television had given cinema a run for its money in the 1950s, the tables were turned and it was now television's turn to feel under threat with the arrival of home video. For the first time, it was now possible to purchase or rent a copy of a movie, or other type of video peogramming for that matter, and view it in the comfort of one's own home. Much to everyone's surprise, it was not TV that felt the impact of home video, but the drive-in theatre. The X-Generation - the children of Baby Boomers - preferred watching movies at home to the drive-in, and by the turn of the century, most drive-ins had closed down and the land on which they stood was subdivided and redeveloped.

Video games and home computers were introduced onto the domestic market in the late 1970s, and began to gain popularity by the middle of the 1980s. Baby Boomers who ran businesses quickly caught on to the new PC technology, but in homes, it would be the X-Generation who would first embrace video games and personal computers. Many Baby Boomers continued to resist computer technology for some time, often succumbing only after being pressured by their children or friends, by having to learn to use a computer at work, or by having to help a child with their homework.