9 - Paul Keating's global vision for Australia
Oct 16, 2026 · 5 min · 4 segments
9 - Paul Keating's global vision for Australia by Australian Citizens Party
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Oct 16, 2026 · 5 min · 4 segments
9 - Paul Keating's global vision for Australia by Australian Citizens Party
He was a street brawler politician who left school in year ten, but who developed refined tastes for French art and classical music and educated himself on a broad spectrum of economic and foreign policy thought through voracious reading.
As a long-time Citizens Party activist, I have mixed feelings about Keating, both despising his neoliberal economic so-called reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and admiring his outspoken opposition to the more recent war talk about China.
University of Sydney Professor of Modern History, James Curran's new book on Paul Keating expands on the origins of his nationalist and geopolitical thinking and details his agenda as prime minister to advance his vision.
From the insights in Curran's book, it's not surprising that it was Keating who took responsibility to bat down the insanity of war talk that gripped Australian politics from 2017 onwards, such as in his spectacular March 2023 appearance at the National Press Club.
I must confess that because I spent all of Paul Keating's 1991 to '96 prime ministership, which is when I got involved in politics, hating him for privatizing the Commonwealth Bank and his other neoliberal policies, I didn't pay enough attention to what he was trying to do in foreign policy.
Grand Ambition does an excellent job explaining Keating's vision and how all-consuming it was for his administration.
He was a street brawler politician who left school in year ten, but who developed refined tastes for French art and classical music and educated himself on a broad spectrum of economic and foreign policy thought through voracious reading.
As a long-time Citizens Party activist, I have mixed feelings about Keating, both despising his neoliberal economic so-called reforms of the 1980s and 1990s and admiring his outspoken opposition to the more recent war talk about China.
University of Sydney Professor of Modern History, James Curran's new book on Paul Keating expands on the origins of his nationalist and geopolitical thinking and details his agenda as prime minister to advance his vision.
From the insights in Curran's book, it's not surprising that it was Keating who took responsibility to bat down the insanity of war talk that gripped Australian politics from 2017 onwards, such as in his spectacular March 2023 appearance at the National Press Club.
I must confess that because I spent all of Paul Keating's 1991 to '96 prime ministership, which is when I got involved in politics, hating him for privatizing the Commonwealth Bank and his other neoliberal policies, I didn't pay enough attention to what he was trying to do in foreign policy.
Grand Ambition does an excellent job explaining Keating's vision and how all-consuming it was for his administration.
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