CNN.com - Paul Keating Interview Transcript
(Part One)
LORRAINE: Welcome to TalkAsia, I'm Lorraine Hahn. This week, one of the prime shapers of modern Australia. Paul Keating spent thirteen years at the highest levels of power in Canberra. As treasurer, he famously warned the country could become a "Banana Republic." He prescribed the tough medicine many credit with revitalizing the economy. As Prime Minister, he fought passionately for close integration with Asia, a break from the British Monarchy, and a payback for the injustices committed against Aborigines. But when Paul Keating lost the election and left politics in 1996, many Australians perceived him as arrogant. His famous over the top Parliamentary style may have worn thin on a few too many voters. I visited Mister Keating recently at his office in Sydney. I want to share out personal conversation with you over the next half hour. I started by asking him – How alive does he feel his vision for the country is today?
KEATING: There's always been two fundamental views about Asia and Australia, two groups of opinion. One is that we find our security in Asia, the other is we find our security from Asia. We hold hands with great and powerful friends, and we protect ourselves and hedge our bets. The other view, the view I belong to is, we find our security in Asia, we find it by being useful in the Asian community, we find it by building coalitions and this is an imperative. So this is why I think that's the imperative in the end, we know it.
LORRAINE: Why couldn't you have sold this idea to the Australian public?
KEATING: I think basically we have. There is now a much wider understanding of the importance of Indonesia than there used to be. It is our largest, nearest neighbour.
LORRAINE: I read you were pretty friendly with former President Suharto, is that correct?
KEATING: Yes I was.
LORRAINE: Did you have a very good rapport? How did that relationship come about? It seems that you are two very different types of people
KEATING: He has a very shy and introverted character, Suharto, very shy, but entirely dedicated to the notion of nation building.
LORRAINE: Did you advise him at all?
KEATING: I actually advised him to retire. I was the one who had the nasty task of seeing him. I saw him on the morning of that famous picture where Camdessus stood above him with his arms folded. He left me to see Camdessus. I had two hours on him, and I said to him, it's important to the political life it's not what you've done but how you leave. You should say I am going to run for another term, if you're determine to, but then say I won't be completing the term, make it clear that succession is going to happen. That's all the people here want to know, that you're prepared to go without discord. Then appoint a Vice President who is able to enjoy the power and energy that you had. Anyway, he listened, but in the end he didn't do it.
LORRAINE: That leads me to a natural next question, and actually one of our Malaysian viewers sent me an e-mail and this relates to Mahathir, Dr Mahathir stepping down. The question is that he's someone you once referred to as you recalcitrant. How do you feel looking back on that remark?
KEATING: He and I had a difference of view about the world at the end of the cold war. He wanted a set of Asia only relationships. I said to him and to others, that we couldn't build a body in Asia without the security guarantee. Without Japan and Korea and the Philippines and indeed Australia being present, that was the United States. So essentially he and I didn't fall out personally, we fell out over policy, and in the end I was able to get APEC back together with the United States in it, and I think he regarded this as a bit of a setback.
LORRAINE: I don't know if you actually watched the television and saw him, crying on television when he announced that he had enough.
KEATING: Well, there's a bit of the thespian in all of us.
LORRAINE: How exhausting is being in senior level politics?
KEATING: It's like the boy on the burning deck, you look around there's no one behind you. Losers are of their essence always out in front. And being out in front is pretty wearing. The essence of leadership is essentially taking the responsibility of trying to interpret the future to the present. You're always trying to interpret the future to the present. That means trying to bring that community with you at the same time. This is always tough.
LORRAINE: Were you tired at the end of your premiership?
KEATING: Weary rather than tired. Politicians never fade away; they just keep carrying on, you know, their class.
LORRAINE: A class of their own...
KEATING: A class of their own, yes, a bit like the boxer, a bit punched around, but we carry on. After the twelfth round, you're a bit weary but you've got to keep going.
LORRAINE: Was it worth it?
KEATING: Oh it's always worth it. Oh god yeah, it's always worth it.
LORRAINE: Well there were many sleepless nights I presume?
KEATING: Yeah, but it's fun, it's wearying but it's fun.
LORRAINE: You got into politics at what? The age of fifteen?
KEATING: Yeah.
LORRAINE: That's a long time. What does a fifteen year old know about politics?
KEATING: Well you know you've got to be in it. You don't know much, but you know you've got to be in it.
LORRAINE: When we come back we'll hear more about Paul Keating's early days in politics, and how he feels about being called "Arrogant."
(Part Two)
LORRAINE: This is TalkAsia. That was a very short, and very mild example of Paul Keating in action in the Australian Parliament. He's famous for scathing personal attacks on members of the opposition, delivered with the eloquence of a poet. Keating calls politics "the ultimate high wire act." I spent part of my time with him in Sydney finding out what he means by that.
KEATING: All these boring business types you have to interview, they all think they're on top of the wire. There is only one high wire, that's public life.
LORRAINE: Well, you're in business now aren't you?
KEATING: Well yeah I know, but it's as boring as I always thought it was. All these guys walking around with all their millions, that's all they've got, they've got nothing else. Yet, the only high wire is public life, because this is where you get the conjunction of all the pressures of big societies, relationships between countries, social grips within countries and issues. So you know, it's full of zing.
LORRAINE: I know, but it just seems like a completely thankless and ruthless sort of business to be in.
KEATING: It is. It's completely without thanks. The only reward in a public life is public progress. You stand back and say what did I get out of it? You look around and the place is better, and that's it.
LORRAINE: Is that really you though?
KEATING: Too right, yeah it is.
LORRAINE: I've looked through those Parliamentary records, and you do have a way with words.
KEATING: Well I hope so.
LORRAINE: Was all that, you know those tantrums and nasty exchanges really necessary?
KEATING: They're not nasty, they're just simply, well you see politics is a civilizing influence on what is otherwise uncivilized behavior. What Parliamentary chambers do is take the contest for ideas, and put them into some sort of constitutional form. But the ideas have still got to be sharp otherwise they spill over into places you see. You saw them in Bosnia, you saw them in the American Civil War, you see them often where they are not contained. What the parliamentary or democratic system does is contain them; it doesn't mean they put them to sleep.
LORRAINE: Now you've also been accused of being pretty arrogant. Do you think the fact that you're seen by some as arrogant and quick tempered could have cost you your job?
KEATING: All the ones that like me, love me, and the ones that don't, don't. They say I'm arrogant. I was never arrogant. They always confused pride in one's work and craft and the achievements, and the sense of urgency to push it through, that sense of urgency and indignation, as in someway being arrogant. Was Deng Xiao Ping arrogant to say that the old way was the wrong way? I'm going to open the Chinese colony up, was that arrogant or was that progressive?
LORRAINE: What are you like when you're alone?
KEATING: Oh, I'm sentimental to the last teardrop.
LORRAINE: Not the person we see on telly?
KEATING: No, I'm interested in the arts, I'm interested in cultural things, I'm interested in history, I'm very nostalgic about things.
LORRAINE: What about domestic issues? Does it make you frustrated sometimes when you hear policies come through when you're not in a position of power, so you cannot really do anything?
KEATING: Yeah, well that's the small "d" democrat in me. In a democracy, you've got to let the public decide to have a change, and while they've got every right to have a change, that doesn't necessarily mean to say that they get better. In this case, I don't think they got better. I mean I think the government that succeeded mine, has let the threads of the great rise of Australian nationalism go, they've lost the threads in Asia. We're now much too prone to uncritically accept U.S. policy; we've lost any basis of a true reconciliation with the Aborigines. This is not progress.
LORRAINE: I was going to ask you about the Aborigines, and the Monarchy obviously, two huge issues that you stood for. Is it, one, time for a reconciliation and an apology to the Indigenous people, and two, would you stand by the disengagement of the Monarchy now?
KEATING: It's a just a joke for Australia to have Queen Elizabeth II as the high head of the state. It's just a joke. It's a very interesting thing when Prime Minister Howard went to the funeral of the Queen Mum, he was way at the back of the Church, that's where the Brits have got us. I like Britain, it's a bit of an old theme park actually, but be that as it may, it's irrelevant to Australia.
LORRAINE: What about the Aboriginal situation? They are asking for a formal apology from the government, is it time?
KEATING: Well, I don't think they should bother. Who wants an apology from someone who doesn't want to give it? Forget it. Wait until Howard is rolled, rolled up by history and we get on to someone who understands the importance, the important fact that those of European descent here can't really, and will never really, come to terms with Australia until this relationship with the Aborigines is made good.
LORRAINE: When we come back – a rare look at Keating's greatest personal treasures. The ones on his mantelpiece, and also the ones who call him "dad."
(Part Three)
LORRAINE: This is TalkAsia, we're hearing from former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who I spoke to at his office in Sydney. The question of the week comes from Dirk in Sydney, he asks, what drew you to politics? Here's what Mister Keating had to say....
KEATING: Well, I don't believe in heroes, but the nearest one that ever came to me, and interesting for a labour inclined person was a British conservative politician, Churchill. Because of the moral clarity which Churchill had, he had one of the centrally important ideas of the 20th century, and that was that Hitler was a psychotic criminal who couldn't be dealt with. Yet this whole class in Britain wanted Churchill to deal with him. On the strengths of his integrity and only his integrity, did essentially he refuse to recognize Hitler's control of Western Europe. It is that kind of clarity that one is drawn to, so I said, that's the business he's in, that the business I want to be in.
LORRAINE: Now you have no formal university education? Correct?
KEATING: No.. I did three of four, I think PhD's on the job.
LORRAINE: I was just going to ask you, you had to formulate fiscal and monetary policy, bring the country up--Where did you learn it? On the streets... did you read it?
KEATING: Well, I was in Parliament a long time, you pick economic material up from treasuries, you pick it up from official discussion you pick it up in conversation. I had too many things to learn to be stuck with a course.
LORRAINE: Or a textbook.
KEATING: That's what I thought. The discipline of the course. Like an intellectual gadfly, I was fluttering between flowers and didn't want to light on one. Essentially it is trying to pick up distilled truths received wisdoms ahead of your age. How do you get the benefit of wisdom which comes with age and experience, how do you get it early?
LORRAINE: How do you?
KEATING: Well you talk to people who have done things and you try and either read history or you talk to people. You gradually try to accelerate your learning, if you're a listener. But you have to be a good listener.
LORRAINE: Did your parents influence you and edge you on and support you?
KEATING: Yes, I had very strong parents with firm political views but more than that, sort of guiding principles and that sticks to you. Because in a public life, when you are on the burning deck, if you don't have the inner belief, its hard to carry on, and you really get that from your parents.
LORRAINE: Was there something that they taught you specifically that sticks with you?
KEATING: I think that what sticks with you is love and affection more than anything else. There's got to be someone in the world that thinks that you're important.
LORRAINE: I'm sure daughters feel that way
KEATING: Mmm, and I try to do for them what was done for me
LORRAINE: I was looking through one of your books, Engagement and you had a number of pictures in the center of your book of all your travels, and in that you had pictures with your daughters in them. Which I'm sure is very unusual being a private person yourself, which I respect, but aside from your personal life, is that what you want to teach your children, to be culturally aware? Are they the next generation of Australians that we will see?
KEATING: Yeah I think so, that this generation is a generation that hasn't faced war and that has the bounty of the economic rebirth of Australia. It's got material wealth, but they have to find their way philosophically and I think we have entered an age of selfishness. Let me say, my parent's generation was far more committed to a communitarian view, a community view, doing things as a nation than I think my generation or my children's generation. When I was a kid, we used to go out on a boat, and there would be two hundred of us, and we would stop at one of the islands of Sydney harbour and have a barbeque. This doesn't happen today, kids spin off in twos and threes or often ones. There isn't that point of congregation, there isn't the joint joy that comes from being together, and I think this might change.
LORRAINE: Are you a tough father?
KEATING: No, I'm a pushover. That's part of the problem.
LORRAINE: You get to spend more time with them now right?
KEATING: Oh yeah, I see a lot of them, I do and I invest time with them. I've got a son and three daughters. Fathers are always a pushover for the girls.
LORRAINE: That's always the case though, isn't it?
KEATING: You can't help but like them.
LORRAINE: All right, you invest time with your kids, you also invest, I understand, in very expensive antiques. You like European history, classical music, where did that come from, you come from humble beginnings, it seems like a contradiction in kind?
KEATING: I somehow got onto the threads of classical music when I was young. Once you hear the tunes, the big tunes, you can never quite get them out of your head. In terms of architecture and the decorative arts, the great modern political life was set by what happened in the French and the American Revolutions. They were fueled by the enlightenment in Europe- order, reason and progress. Turning away the feudal monarchies and the church, the feudal power of the church. Breaking the feudal power of the monarchies and the church, and that force of the enlightenment, which brought people like Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Washington to the fort politically in America, and brought the revolutionaries in France. This is what drove the architecture and decoration of the period. So my interest in architecture and decoration is of the revolutionary things. For the same reasons that Thomas Jefferson built the house Monticello for himself and all the elements in it, are the same things I see. The interesting thing is, he and I collected the same people, but he was collecting them when they were contemporary.
LORRAINE: You also collect Asian artwork?
KEATING: Yes I do.
LORRAINE: Any particular type of work?
KEATING: I think that Chinese art, of its essence, trivializes everything European. I don't think any European art ever got to the fundamental truths of Asian art.
LORRAINE: What is your most valued piece you have today? Is there one?
KEATING: No, not really no, because I don't value them in a monetary sense.
LORRAINE: Which one do you like?
KEATING: Great things never weaken. Great art never weakens, it radiates things for you. You get a little radiation. As our little Taoist priest sitting on the mantelpiece, he's early Ching, I think 1711-1730, one of the shortest Emperors, still quite late, but he's still 300 years old. But there it is, with that infinite grace and introspection and it has the inner certainty. The piece radiates calm, you see? So I often go over there and look at it. I think you are, clever thing you are.
LORRAINE: Paul Keating, statesman at large and connoisseur of the finer things in life. You know he told me one of his greatest pleasures these days is having an unstructured day to spend enjoying his antiques.
