The article argues there is little evidence that World War I quickened the currents of structural change in the Australian economy. It suggests instead that the War was reinforcing of the Deakinite model of economic management that already been established by the outbreak of War. It did so by enlarging the tenet of ‘protection plus imperial preference’ that had been inscribed in the pre‐War policy consensus; by strengthening the revenue and power of the central state basic to the Deakinite framework of economic governance; and by assimilating rural interests into the terms of that framework.