The Hawke government used $36 million of taxpayer money in a futile bid to keep Kodak manufacturing in Australia.
In the end, it was technology that ended a near 100-year link with the iconic photographic film company.
The controversial decision to prop up Kodak (Australasia), is echoed in a more recent debate about how much public money governments should use to prop-up foreign-owned manufacturers, especially carmakers.
No-one really saw the portent of Kodak's troubles 25 years ago, but it coincided with the advent of digital photography.
Within a decade traditional film photography was heading the way of the dodo.
Cabinet papers for 1988 and 1989 - released by the National Archives of Australia - show the government was concerned that helping out one particular firm would create an undesirable precedent.
Then industry minister John Button argued Kodak was a globally efficient business.
"There are strong arguments in terms of the net economic and revenue benefits for providing limited support to Kodak," he said in a submission to cabinet.
Government assistance took the form of a bounty on local production and ongoing 15 per cent tariff on film imports. The government did consider other support such as export assistance but concluded that would run counter to trade agreements.
Kodak's plant in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg finally closed in November 2004, concluding a rich history dating back to 1884 when pharmacist Thomas Baker started a business manufacturing photographic plates.
That was only four years after George Eastman, founder of the Eastman Kodak company, started his own photographic business.
What became Kodak (Australasia) stemmed from a merger in 1908. By 1988 the company was Australia's second largest exporter of elaborately transformed manufactures, employing 1500 people at Coburg with sales of $457 million.
The largest exporter General Motors Holden has hung in somewhat longer. It ends domestic car production in 2017.
In the late 1980s Kodak was in trouble, with significant global over-production.
The Coburg plant found itself in the spotlight as the company was unwilling to close plants in the US, Europe or South America.
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