People working in the area of early childhood, either as practitioners or as advocates, are often faced with the task of trying to make sense of federal and state policies. Adopting the approach that an historical perspective is necessary in order to understand the social context in which change or attempted change occurs, this paper presents a history of Australian events to illustrate variations in policies for young children and to sort out some of the factors that lie behind these variations. It is proposed that two factors contribute to such variations: one such factor has been termed "ideologies," describing the values people adopt, the categories within which they think, and the kinds of evidence or argument they find convincing. The second factor has been termed "the resources of interested parties," referring to the facilities available to the people seeking change or to the people who need to be persuaded. Four specific historical events which occurred in Australia during the 1970s illustrate these two factors; further conditions affecting the making and unmaking of policy are discussed. (MP)