A country's economic strategies typically reflect its current circumstances, history and values. As Australia emerged from World War 2 its inherited economic strategy had been built around imperial preference, and population and capital flows from Britain. The focus of Australian economic strategy for the first quarter of a century after World War 2 was economic development. Australia's most serious postwar problem was expected to be inflation. By mid-1974 unemployment started to rise and there was increasing contention within the Labor government regarding both the primacy of its incompatible objectives and the means of pursuing those objectives. The 20 years since the 1991-92 recession represent the longest period of sustained economic growth since Federation, with an average annual growth rate of 3.5 per cent. Australia is even more closely integrated with the global economy and continues to rely on commodity exports and foreign capital inflows to finance a significant part of local investment.