{"id":877514,"date":"2026-09-02T14:34:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/877514\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T14:34:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T14:34:18","slug":"timidity-is-a-virus-paul-keating-fights-the-fading-of-the-light-as-he-seeks-to-enshrine-his-legacy-paul-keating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/877514\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Timidity is a virus\u2019: Paul Keating fights the fading of the light as he seeks to enshrine his legacy | Paul Keating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Queen Elizabeth II met Paul Keating<\/a> \u201calone, to her credit\u201d in what the prime minister was informed was her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria\u2019s, favourite room at Balmoral Castle.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I took some pleasure in explaining the furniture to her,\u201d Keating recalls, an old elan breaking through.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was made of Karelian, Russian Karelian birchwood. She had kept all the green-and-blue tartan carpets, all worn, so the room had something going for it. But the thing is, what had nothing going for it was any relativity to Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keating was in the UK to deliver his monarch a message, that Australia, Australians, \u201cdid not need her any more\u201d. Australia should, must become a republic.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said to me in this conversation, rather plaintively, \u2018my family and I do our best for Australia\u2019, whereas what I was really offering was a way out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Queen Elizabeth and Paul Keating in 1992. Photograph: Stephen Dupont\/AFP<\/p>\n

A file note written by Keating following the meeting re-affirmed his belief in Australia\u2019s independent future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hereditary nature of the queen\u2019s position, the remoteness from any contemporary mandate, struck me at that moment, at that proximity, as so banal, even sad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keating, Australia\u2019s 24th prime minister, is in conversation Wednesday night with Sydney University professor of modern history, James Curran, author of Grand Ambition: Paul Keating\u2019s Global Vision for Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is an adroitly drawn portrait of a past leader \u2013 Keating lost power 30 years ago \u2013 but one who remains firmly convinced his vision is still very much this country\u2019s future. An Australia that finds its security in, rather than from, Asia, that will be a republic, that will finally walk the path to reconciliation with its indigenous history.<\/p>\n

\u2018Timidity is like a virus\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cMy view of the country was bigger than the country\u2019s view of itself, but the vision will never deteriorate,\u201d Keating says.<\/p>\n

This evening, Curran reminds his audience (gently) that his interlocutor is no longer a young man, a child of the second world war (born 1944), who was just 25 years old when he entered parliament in 1969. Who cut his political teeth during the height of the cold war, and whose time as leader coincided with its end (once held up as the \u201cend of history\u201d).<\/p>\n

Keating\u2019s first remarkable month as prime minister took in the fall of the Soviet Union; the arrival on Australian shores for the first time in three decades of a US president (George HW Bush, whom Keating wanted to \u201cput in a headlock\u201d to get something from him \u2013 the result was Apec, now still a key leaders\u2019 meeting on the multilateral calendar, deep in its fourth decade); and a visit from Her Majesty (still yet a couple of years from their awkward meeting at Balmoral).<\/p>\n

Keating\u2019s age is apparent.<\/p>\n

The voice is a little weaker, raspier; the pauses \u2013 formerly used to such dramatic effect on the floor of the Reps \u2013 are a little longer; the quotes once-remembered now come through an aide-memoire.<\/p>\n

But there is still the killer line, the rapier wit, blunted a little, but still penetrating.<\/p>\n

\u201cTimidity,\u201d he tells Curran in their interviews for the book, \u201cis like a virus in the bloodstream.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curran writes: \u201cKeating\u2019s central theme over the years is that the country has become afraid, and that its leaders have refrained from articulating a bigger idea of the place.<\/p>\n

\u201cInstead of long-term strategic thinking about the kinds of issues coming down the national and international track, he sees frenzied activity. His retort? \u2018Busyness is not substance.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Australia suffers no shortage of political autobiography, for better or worse. Keating, famously\/notoriously, has never put pen to paper in his own defence.<\/p>\n

Recollections of a Bleeding Heart, a memoir by his speechwriter, Don Watson, was said to have wounded him. He saw it as a betrayal. In response to what he saw as yet another Hawke biography, Keating delivered a veiled threat: \u201cIf I get around to writing a book, I will be telling the truth; the whole truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It never eventuated.<\/p>\n

But throughout this conversation, and throughout Grand Ambition, it is apparent that Keating has always kept an eye on legacy, on his place in history, and on grand ambition, his own and the country\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u2018Trump wants to do is avoid world war three\u2019<\/p>\n

He keeps, Curran writes, meticulous records of the policies he considers the signal markers of his time in office, \u201cthe pillars of his political legacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

For a historian of Curran\u2019s forensic eye, exclusive access to these files is manna from heaven.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach folder contains the relevant primary cabinet documents and diplomatic cables and, where applicable, briefings to and from his advisers and department, records of what other ministers thought or wrote, details of critical conversations with other leaders, and a carefully selected array of newspaper articles.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are all stamped \u2018PJ KEATING PERSONAL COLLECTION\u2019, arranged in precise chronological order and stapled at top left. The stamp itself is a statement about more than just the provenance of the documentary record; it is asserting, in its own way, Keating\u2019s ownership of that past.\u201d<\/p>\n

To end the evening, Keating is asked for his message for young Australians, and the future they will encounter and make. The key themes are still there: a republic, indigenous reconciliation, a fairer Australia \u201cmaking housing more affordable is a great thing to be doing. And if we\u2019ve lost 10 or 15% in house values<\/a>, so what?\u201d.<\/p>\n

But there are still surprises too. Keating\u2019s proclaimed support for the foreign policy of the current occupant of the White House \u2013 \u201cwhat Trump wants to do is avoid world war three\u201d \u2013 his existential concern over the rise of artificial intelligence: \u201cwhich I think is going to be the greatest agency of change since the discovery of electricity\u201d.<\/p>\n

Keating is taken to a speech he gave at Kokoda. On Anzac Day in 1992, as prime minister, he had fallen to his knees and kissed the base of the memorial to fallen Australian soldiers, describing the PNG highlands village as \u201cthe place where the depth of the soul of the Australian nation was confirmed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is important for all of us, but particularly and especially young Australians,\u201d Keating said that day, \u201cto believe in an independent Australia, beholden to nobody. We can\u2019t deny young Australians their birthright to a past with meaning for them and a future without meaning: it has to be a future with meaning.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Queen Elizabeth II met Paul Keating \u201calone, to her credit\u201d in what the prime minister was informed was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":877515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-877514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=877514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/877515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=877514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=877514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=877514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}