The Six Best Moments Of Paul Keating’s Tell-All Interview With Kerry O’Brien At The Sydney Opera House

At the Sydney Opera House on Tuesday night, former Prime Minister Paul Keating sat down with former 7:30 Report host Kerry O’Brien to talk about Keating’s life and time in office, his achievements and failings, his friends and rivals, and his take on how Australia has shaped up in the nineteen years since he was PM. It’s part of O’Brien’s pretty exhaustive exploration of Keating’s political life recently, as explored in his four-part ABC series which aired a few weeks ago and his new book, Keating.

As with those efforts, Tuesday night was part political memoir, part collective lamentation at the state of Australian politics, and part two old blokes reminiscing about the good old days.

Video of the full interview is now available and is embedded below, but here are some highlights if a 75-minute long nostalgia session is a bit much.

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On why he’ll never write an autobiography:

“Anyone who was ever any good never wrote about themselves.”

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On Bob Hawke:

“Bob was, of course, taking responsibility in terms of the general stewardship of the government, but in terms of spiritual nourishment and drift, I took that on. I did it, and I did it for thirteen years … I forgave Bob his indiscretions, provided he would let me keep my foot on the accelerator, but when he started going for the brake, that was when it was all over. Prime Ministers are very useful to a Treasurer, but they are no longer useful if they don’t do the tricks. So when Bob stopped doing the tricks, I had to do Bob in.”

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On the republic, and modernising Australia:

“No great country has the monarch of another country as their head of state. No great country has the flag of another country in the corner of their flag. But more than that, no country which is great — and feels itself great — wants to live with the shame of the dispossession of its original people.

“We beat being marginalised like South Africa with apartheid by the skin of our teeth, getting out of White Australia. By the skin of our teeth.”

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On diplomacy:

“At the second meeting of APEC in Bogor, which was hosted by President Suharto, I had Jiang Zemin doing the karaoke with Bill Clinton on the clarinet. And y’know, if you’re doing the karaoke with some guy, you’re up there singing, it does reduce the strategic tensions quite a bit. ”

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On his greatest achievements:

“Saving Australia from its international mediocrity. The biggest emotional investment and commitment was to the whole notion of Aboriginality and trying to deal with the original colonial grievance of dispossession.

“We pulled Australia out of that poverty we were heading for in the 1970s, under Fraser and Howard and Menzies and all the rest. The Hawke and Keating governments rescued Australia from that mediocrity, that’s the primary achievement. And we did it in the nick of time. Look how wealthy the place is now.”

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On contemporary politics:

“The bar is now so low you’ve only just got to step over it to be approved of. I think Malcolm Turnbull has grown through his Parliamentary career. I think hios defeat for the leadership in 2010 was a traumatic event for him. I think it’s made him think about himself and the country, and I think he’ll be a better leader for that having happened. The real question is: can he now take the now very right-wing Liberal Party anywhere back near the centre? That’ll be the real test. Or whether he’s stuck with the Looney Tunes show on the right.

“The Labor Party runs the real risk that …. if Malcolm Turnbull can shift those pre-Copernican obscurantists in his party at all, and they give him a bit of room to move towards the centre, that will present great strategic difficulties for the Labor Party.”

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You can watch the interview in full below. It’s a good watch.

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Feature image by Prudence Upton.