The wound that Howard inflicted on him in 1996 have not healed yet.

True. Paul Keating says:

[Howard] did no thinking.

Also true. So you’re both right.

Oh, and BTW the proposed increase in complulsory super that Keating keeps pushing is really, really crap policy.

dd, I too would really appreciate a few words of explanation.

For the life of me I can’t imagine why you would think that.

I mean John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He was at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio. The guy did no thinking. When a country has a lead they’re does not think, think then that country starts to move back.

The wound that Howard inflicted on him in 1996 have not healed yet. You get the feeling that they never will.

Part of Rudd’s entry to PM’ship included that he be very different from the codger, whose ten years of stranglehold on national narrative wore thin.

Rudd is failing, along historical lines, to establish that national narrative we’ve come to expect one way or another from PMs, but only if seen in that light. Again, I think Rudd has thrown open those sorts of historical constraints, thru the Aussie Summit etc, is gathering information, to present more cohesively later. I could be wrong, but I don’t think punters are ready for the narrative thing just yet; I think they’d become sick of that style of politics being rammed down their throats and at a guess Rudd is still letting in that fresh air into the system.

Punching out a narrative as Keating seems to want can certainly be the rope which ties political sails for forward thrust, but it can also be the rope by which a PM eventually gets tied to and run up the mast.

Also, I think it’s too early to really tell what such a narrative should be, with so much looming over the horizon, eighteen months or so away - CC and economic instability questions for starters, huge in themselves, let alone the daily stuff which hasn’t yet concretised in the public political mind, but will. I think then we’ll know if Rudd has played his early year well, or not.

Not knowing him is frustrating, and we want to draw a rule from him to measure against past knowns, but he’s clearly doing it his way, and while he might be a flop I don’t think he can be at all underestimated, especially in terms of playing the politics.

Now Rudd is a boring, prudish, small-c-conservative micromanaging workaholic who, unlike Keating, is hard to warm to personally. I know who I’d rather share a drink with. But he’s likely to last a lot longer than Keating as PM and Keating is in no position to give him advice.

Oh, and BTW the proposed increase in complulsory super that Keating keeps pushing is really, really crap policy.

If Rudd is micro-managing, then by definition he will not grasp the mettle on the really big topics such as water, climate change and constitutional reform (such as getting state government to do sensible non-parochial things.

It seems to me, as Julian Morrow observed on Q&A, that Rudd’s government is really not providing the leadership people want on defining issues of our time such as water, climate change, renewable energy and sustainable living.

Keating still makes me chuckle, most recently for his accurate description of Costello as a nong, and in the past for cracks such as “the Souflée only rising once” (Peacock). But I won’t forgive him for the RFAs and sanctioning ongoing destruction of Australia’s unique and irreplaceable native forests, which of course still continues unabated, so he was not wholly responsible for this.

Whatever.

David Love did piece on Perspective the other night about Keating’s unfinished business:

Keating was driven by two imperatives. One was to reach a pension level that Treasury told him was enough to allow the average income earner live in comfort in his old age.. The other was that at 15 per cent a national pension policy was enough to fund a level of total Australian savings which would bring total spending into line and prevent it spilling abroad to anything like the extent that it has. We are far from in line at present. But if we could proceed now to work towards completing the Keating revolution we could look forward to more comfortable times.

We could have had enough to retire on an income similar to our work earnings and boosted national savings to a degree that we had heaps of dosh to fund our own development with no current account deficit.

Costello commissioned a ‘generational report’ and then used it to excuse handing out dosh for electoral purposes to people who didn’t really need it. A huge wasted opportunity during the good times. He deserves a special place in the dustbin of history.

Keating is spot on about Cossie.

Kim’s right in assuming that it was a lack of time on my part. I also do think there’s some value in highlighting what might otherwise be overlooked and making a few connections to see what folks think.

In this case, I wonder why the writer couldn’t have gone straight to the actual event of Keating’s speech at a book launch (or whatever it was that created publicity) and riffed off Keating’s words, and why it is that he’s always media gold, instead of regurgitating slabs of the Crikey commentary.

As for your comment about ‘news’, aren’t you taking a rather mainstream view of what constitutes ‘news’? Often blogs serve the purpose of bringing us stories untouched by the corporate media, or fresh slants on the mainstream topics du jour. Perspectives on news stories offered by the blogging universe may be individualistic or revelatory, unearthing a buried nugget of truth which would never make its way into the dead tree media. Thought that was part of what LP tries to do, on occasion.

If you think the purpose of this blog is to provide “news”, then I’m afraid I think you’re mistaken.

Never will be a politician in this country like Paul Keating again. I just wish he could be brought back into the Labor fold in a more official capacity.

FWIW, I still don’t rate Rudd but hey he’s not John Howard which is the main thing.

I can see Howard C’s point that many react to such blasts. They’re by no means my cup of tea, but I always look forward to them. I suppose it is a bit like Aussie Rules where you need a bit of aggro in addition to talent.

My favourite polly was Dunstan, who only very rarely resorted to invective. But after 40-odd years observation, I’m starting to realize he was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. Until another emerges, we’ll probably have to settle for Keating or similar.

I’m sorry, (scratch that, I’m not sorry) but I believe that being civil enables people to discuss the issues more rationally, rather than getting sidelined by petty personalities. Keating thinks Costello is a nong; could he care to define the term? Does it have something to do with job performance or with political affiliation?

If we can discuss the issues, and what people actually do, without resorting to using four letter words, then we may actually get some important stuff done around here. I’ve grown up surrounded by people who thought things should be done differently, but I only really have a problem with them if they attack me personally.