Australia's own independent and combative literary tradition has led to the present range of Australian poetry, enhanced by influences ranging from the Acmeists to Williams and Ashbery. Some critics see the movement from the metrical restraint of that earlier generation of poets to the free verse of more recent writers as indicative of a movement from repression and conformism to liberation. That seems too reductive a response to a complex set of political and cultural changes. It's also reflective of the habit that's developed of pigeon-holing writers, denying them individuality, like Larkin being hauled over the coals for not being 'modern' enough. Poetry itself has to be useful to people, though not necessarily in an obvious way.
Writers often get nervous when there's talk about their responsibilities.
Whatever might be said against the strident nationalism and ersatz Aboriginality of the Jindyworobaks, they at least had this in common with European poets such as Rilke and Lorca they believed in the social value of poetry. Ultimately, they believed that poetry mattered. There were none of the doubts about the function and value of literature, even of language, that some writers and critics have latterly espoused. I guess I'll reach the end, then time Will rinse its lacerating hands. The interim is all for all of us on Earth.