An Australian Mirage

Abstract

This thesis contains a detailed academic analysis of the complete rise and fall of Christopher Skase and his Qintex group mirage. It uses David Harvey's 'Condition of Postmodernity' to locate the collapse within the Australian political economic context of the period (1974-1989). It does so in order to answer questions about why and how the mirage developed, why and how it failed, and why Skase became the scapegoat for the Australian corporate excesses of the 1980s. I take a multi-disciplinary approach and consider corporate collapse, corporate regulation and the role of accounting, and corporate deviance.