Launching rockets off Cape York was one of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's stunt policies in the 1986 Queensland election.

But three years later the Hawke government had been roped into the circus.

By 1989, Sir Joh had departed politics but that December cabinet agreed to support a Cape York Spaceport to launch satellites.

Then minister of industry, technology and commerce John Button told cabinet the space port had to be commercially viable and the entrepreneurs could not expect government subsidies or capital.

Cabinet even had no "in-principle objection" to the use of Soviet rockets and ground support equipment. But it did want an environmental impact statement and an assurance that the space port was acceptable to the Cape York Aboriginal community.

The only stumbling block was whether the facility jeopardised the reinstatement by the United States government of the export licences for the AUSSAT satellites.

The ministers need not have worried.

Less than two years later, one of Queensland's white shoe brigade, Malcolm Edwards, the space port's main spruiker, headed to bankruptcy with debts of more than $930 million and the project never got off the ground.

The treaty that never came

Bob Hawke attended the Barunga festival in the Northern Territory in June 1988 and promised an historic treaty with the Aboriginal people.

The Hawke government had been promising to improve representation of Aboriginal interests and issues, but by 1985 attempts to frame a "national model" for land rights had stalled in compromise, amid farmer and miner opposition and distrust from Aboriginal groups. So Hawke's treaty had more than a touch of the sun about it.

In 1987 the new minister for Aboriginal affairs, Gerry Hand, had proposed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody was established.

The commission's workload had first been estimated as 44 reported deaths requiring investigation, but already that number had increased to 120 (99 cases were finally selected for investigation). But in February 1988, Hand and the Minister for Justice, Michael Tate, told cabinet that it would be "unacceptable" to limit the set limits to thenumber of cases to be investigated, just as it was similarly politically unwise to significantly delay the release of the commission's findings.

The expense of additional commissioners and staff was justified by the imperative of concluding a full report as soon possible. Cabinet agreed to four commissioners; a fifth was appointed in November 1988. The terms of reference were widened.

In April 1989, when Commissioner Hal WoottonWootten had weighed whether the practices he was examining amounted to "genocide", the cabinet was persuaded that thehandling of "public perceptions" must be a particular focus.

Whatever the prospects of a treaty, various issues were brought to the cabinet's attention, including ranging from mining on traditional lands; the lack of any progress since the 1970s in excising "living areas" from Northern Territory stock routes; and through to the basic, entrenched and widespread social disadvantage of Aboriginal people, were brought to cabinet's attention.

The 1988-89 budget included a 23 per cent increase in spending on within the Aboriginal affairs portfolio, with a focus on in the provision of essential services for communities.

Hand argued strenuously against the Expenditure Review Committee's concerns that the Community Development Employment Projects scheme - by then reaching urban communities in New South Wales and Victoria - enabled recipients to "double-dip" into Family Assistance Supplements.

Hand insisted CDEP was a labour market program, not a welfare oneprogram. Though he won While winning his case on the day, Hand was on the losing side of the scheme's longer-term assessment of the scheme.

He also Meanwhile Hand argued also for more money for ATSIC. "If ATSIC starts its life under-resourcedHand advised cabinet, we doom it to failure," he warned the cabinet.

ATSIC finally first met the following April. John Howard closed what opponents called "the experiment with indigenous self-government" in 2004.

The little engine that couldn't

Ralph Sarich's orbital engine was the Lasseter's Reef of the Australian car industry.

In August 1988, then minister for industry, technology and commerce John Button told cabinet the engine could be made nufactured in Australia.

The Hawke and  West Australian governments, General Motors Holden, the Ford Motor Company and others had looked at the Sarich engine and recommended it be given the go-ahead.

A year earlier, prime minister Bob Hawke had visited Sarich's Orbital Engine Co headquarters during the 1987 federal election and backed it, big time, promising a feasibility study.

Sarich was a fitter and turner and trainee engineer with the Western Australian Railways, who won the ABC TV program The Inventors in 1972 with his orbital engine, with which he promised more power, fewer emissions and significant fuel economy.

But just like Lasseter's fabled gold line of lore, it was always just over the horizon.

Sixteen years after winning the inventor of the year title there was still no engine, but plenty of rumours that Sarich was talking to with American and Japanese car manufacturers.

"If manufacture were to occur in Australia it could generate considerable economic benefits. It would employ up to 800 people directly, involve capital expenditure of around $300 million and could generate significant export earnings," Button told cabinet.

Sarich wanted $37 million and industry assistance to locate his project in Australia, Button said.

"The government would be delighted to see the establishment in Australia of a commercially viable world-scale engine plant. The Orbital Engine Company's plans are consistent with the government's industry policy objective of encouraging the development of internationally competitive and export-oriented industries that are innovative and firmly integrated into the contemporary global industrial structure."

Cabinet agreed but backed only a limited industry package, including $700,000 for government assistant to Sarich and the possibility of between $15 million and $30 million.

Strong on good intentions, thin on funds, cabinet's offer was not enough to keep Sarich in Australia.

The engine was never made in Australia. Gradually most overseas companies who bought into the orbital engine dropped off but Sarich made a fortune from the idea, other investments and Perth real estate.

Feeling frisky: the body search cometh

Australia's growing international drug trade prompted cabinet to allow frisk-searching of suspected drug mules.

The way drug couriers brought in contraband had changed markedly since the Hawke government's early years.

Cabinet was told by the minister for customs Barry Jones in June 1988 that four years earlier there were 112 drug seizures from passengers arriving at Australian airports.

Most had been hidden in luggage. Only 21, less than 20 per cent, had been concealed in courier's bodies.

But Jones said by 1988 more than half of the 129 seizures had been on people's bodies.

"The growth in international air travel to Australia carries with it increased opportunities for the use of body concealment by drug couriers as a means of importing drugs," he said in a submission to cabinet.

"The continual pressure on Customs to clear arriving passengers expeditiously gives confidence to couriers that they will escape detection because they know that the chances of a body search are minimal given the strict legal and administrative regime attached to such searches."

Jones acknowledged the decision to legislate the searches would attract possible criticism from civil liberties interests.

"This can be countered by referring to the community's concern over drug imports and the strong evidence that body carriage is a popular and growing method of concealment among air travellers," he said.

Cabinet agreed to amend the Customs Act 1901 to allow authorised Customs officers to stop and frisk-search people at international air and sea ports.

Enter Big Brother

Australians had their first real taste of author George Orwell's Big Brother in 1988 with the introduction of the tax file number.

It came after a decade of publicity about million-dollar proceeds from drug crime and tax evasion.

Suddenly, government agencies could assemble an integrated profile of citizens' economic relations with the state, including the prospect of the "non-reviewable discretion" of the Commissioner of Taxation for the first time to disclose information to the Australian Federal Police.

The ability to systematically clamp down on abuses was welcomed by some but it also prompted a revisiting of privacy laws and cabinet support for the creation of the Privacy Commissioner within the Human Rights Commission, to provide "a recognisable institutional guardian for privacy".