The following was delivered as the 2014 Dean Jaensch Lecture at Flinders University, September 16. In opposition, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott were fond of comparing their battles to become the nation’s…
Former PM Paul Keating says the Liberal party has always opposed universal superannuation.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Paul Keating has launched a swingeing attack on the government’s deferral of 12% compulsory superannuation, accusing it of wilfully sabotaging Australia’s savings scheme out of prejudice. The former prime…
Former prime minister Paul Keating argued governments need to use their political capital to drive reform. But this is becoming increasingly difficult in a poll-driven political climate.
AAP/Paul Miller
Throughout Keating, a series of interviews that finished airing on the ABC earlier this month, the former prime minister makes reference to the notion of political capital in relation to the Labor government…
The existence of a dispute tells us more than its adjudication is ever likely to.
AAP Image/Lukas Coch
The Redfern Park Speech, given by former Australian prime minister Paul Keating on December 10 1992, was a speech worth fighting for. It captured harsh truths about Australian history; it used those as…
The full story of the Keating years – and their aftermath – is both far more complex and contentious than the man himself would have us believe in his ABC
interviews.
AAP/David Crosling
The ABC’s four-part series of interviews with Paul Keating, which has just finished airing, displayed the former prime minister and treasurer in all his complexity, both at his best and at his worst. This…
Kevin Rudd leaves parliament with his future as uncertain as his legacy.
AAP/Daniel Munoz
Should we care about Kevin Rudd’s legacy? Will anyone care? Australian political historians gaze with envy at the United States, where past presidents are revered and books about the “founding fathers…
Former prime minister Paul Keating delivers a Remembrance Day address in Canberra.
AAP Image/Alan Porritt
Delivering the Remembrance Day address at the Australian War Memorial, Paul Keating has highlighted the protection that unifying Europe gave from the sort of dangers that led to “Armageddon” last century…
A still from Kerry O'Brien’s interview with Paul Keating.
Image provided by the ABC
National politics has moved on a long way but it’s the familiar Paul Keating - pugnacious, brooding, reflective, funny - who bursts through in the first of a series of interviews with the ABC’s Kerry O'Brien…
With the end of the boom looming, Australia is set to revisit some old economic concerns.
We took the view in the 1970s – it’s the old cargo cult mentality of Australia that she’ll be right. This is the lucky country, we can dig up another mound of rock and someone will buy it from us, or we…
Are leadership battles in Australian politics a sign of party difference or unity? Or is it something altogether different?
AAP/Lukas Coch
In a scene in the famous 90s sitcom Seinfeld, George describes to Jerry an idea for a show about nothing. After the events of the last days and weeks in federal and state politics, we can ask whether Australian…
Has the time come for Paul Keating to put the geo-political cue in the rack?
AAP Image/Guy Wilmot
In charting how Australia has influence in its foreign policy, the figure of Paul John Keating rightly looms large. Yet his recent speech is less effective as a call for greater independence from the USA…
The Business Council of Australia’s Jennifer Westacott has called for a debate over the role of Australia’s public service.
The provocative address by Business Council of Australia chief Jennifer Westacott to the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA) International Congress in Melbourne yesterday achieved something…