At the end of WWII, the Commonwealth government and all state governments, except South Australia, were held by Australian Labor Party. The ALP has a key part of its platform known as the "socialist objective". In more recent times, the socialist objective has largely been ignored but, in the 1940s, the ALP's policy was to centralise control of the economy, including plans to nationalise the banks. A significant number of large enterprises in the Australian economy were already state-owned enterprises, and the government thinking of the time was that was a desirable outcome.
