By the end of this decade we may well look back on the beginning of the 1980’s as a watershed period in the provision of services for children with special needs in Australia. This period from 1979 to 1983 has been an era in which several state and national reports on needs in special education, teacher education and related areas have been published and placed before Federal and State governments for action. Yet, as fate would have it, this has been a period of great economic difficulty dominated by contractionary budgets at the Federal level with inevitable restraint at State levels. It has also been a period of record unemployment with the average person much more concerned about unemployment, family budgets and survival than social issues such as provision of appropriate and rightful resources to educate handicapped children and adults. Indeed, the visibility and relevance of education generally as a social and political issue has been subjugated by more pressing survival issues.