Tonight I went to Paul Keating’s book tour at the Brisbane Powerhouse.
There’s a real sense, as I argued recently at The Drum, that we still live in the John Howard era. But only because the evil angels of this country are continually conjured up by the straighteners and the fixers, the apostles of narrowness, of Whiteness, of backyard boredom.
And they are real.
But, we also, paradoxically, still live in Paul Keating’s Australia.
Perhaps that’s particularly evident from where I write; from a place adjacent to and over-written by the Brisbane River, a Powerhouse that when I was young, was a ruin, but now is a public space that breathes the air of creativity, of culture, of openness, of everyday democracy, that we ought all to want to see more of. It’s transcended arguments about “elites” to become a place where anyone, most anyone, can find something to stir the soul, to sit and watch the river circle back on itself, and to relax, and feel comfortable.
A post-industrial space, too, and there’s something significant in that.
Keating gestured, not just, I think, because he was in Brisbane, to the memory and legacy of ‘Red’ Ted Theodore. A visionary, Keating said, an expander. And Theodore lived not five minutes away from the Powerhouse on the bend of the river at New Farm. On Lower Bowen Terrace, and you don’t need to read his biographers to summon up, or conjure his ghost. You can read all about it (and Theodore, among other things, was a man of the mass media, the founder of The Women’s Weekly) in Vance Palmer’s wonderful Golconda Trilogy.
Rest from your labours, smoke your pipe, play with your daughter, make art on the expansive terrace of a Queenslander.
Eight hours of work, eight hours of leisure, eight hours of sleep. The right to live like that, to live time easily like that, was a result of struggle. The struggle of the workers, of the labour movement, of the Labor Party, of the toilers, and of the feminists who were so prominent in Brisbane’s early radical history.
The better angels of our nature, as a country, and of this place, this country, in particular, sang to us tonight.
There is no reason not to have hope, and to be filled with that hope, about the sort of country this land can be, a country that does justice to its Indigenous inhabitants, whose presence is so pervasive, a country that conjures creativity. That’s a certain vision, and it’s one for which people have fought, and the legacy of those battles is never so present as in the minds of Brisbanites who struggled against the dead cold hand of Joh Bjelke-Petersen to create – something just like this, a warm and pleasant November night where people of good will can gather together; unionists, artists, poets, people, and listen to a vision. And take heed.
Because there were struggles in the 1970s, and 1980s too.
Let them not be forgotten.
NB: I’ll have more to say about what Paul Keating said tonight; but I think I want to speak to what the truth of the cultural moment, which was not possible outside a certain vision of the state as transformational, meant to me on this night.
Update: There are some highlights of Keating’s conversation with Richard Fidler at the Powerhouse last night in this Fairfax story.
Update: Via Brian in comments, here’s a link to PJK’s interview by Richard Fidler on ABC Local Radio yesterday morning, which covers quite a bit of the same ground as last night’s event.
Yesterday Keating was interviewed by Richard Fidler on local radio. One of the best you are ever likely to hear.
Totally impressive was his exposition right at the end of what music, the arts, creativity and emotion means to him, or potentially anyone.
All this article needs is an ending where you see the light on the hill.
Today’s struggles for the soul of Australia are mostly postscripts to the struggles of the late 1960s and 1970s.
The more one thinks of Keating as Treasurer, the less impressive Wayne Swan is. I don’t mean this because of the specifics of what Keating did. But he had a vision and an economic strategy and he tied them both to a political strategy which made him the dominant politician of his era.
In contrast, Mr Mealy Mouth Swan is a nothing. His strategy, such as it is, is no more advanced than reading and responding to the briefs prepared for him by the Treasury.
Case in point: Swan has said nothing about Qantas and the effects of their lock out on the national economy. It’s the national economy, FFS! Keating would have been all over it.
I don’t want to be gloomy, Mark, especially since I agree with everything you say, but what’s so sad-making about this post is that you’re talking about a man and a vision that this country has made it clear it didn’t and doesn’t want. Live by the democracy, die by the democracy, how tragic is that?
There was, in fact, a move to have the Powerhouse Theatre named the Keating Theatre, for all of the reasons you outline. It was knocked back by the Brisbane ALP. Great post Mark, thanks.
Here’s someone else that lives in Keatings Australia, not Howards:
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/opera/peggy-glanvillehicks-address-20111101-1mtnt.html
Great post, Mark. Only been to the Powerhouse once (not living in Brisbane) but it’s an inspiring place. I was thinking at the time if Sydney had a similar space, but sadly I don’t think that it has.
As for Keating, unfortunately PC is correct. The country decided it didn’t want him, assisted by the same corporate interests that are intent on installing Abbott as PM.
adrian @ 7
Sydney has Carriageworks http://www.carriageworks.com.au/ which kinda drew on the Powerhouse “concept” a bit. I’ve not been there since it was completed, only when it was in early construction, but chums tell me great things.
PC, Sam and Adrian, I don’t think the public ever rejected Keating because they never knew him. What they knew was some grotesque media construct.
In the Fidler interview, Keating talks about how you need related big ideas across a range of portfolios and how you need to link these together and communicate them in a coherent narrative. Problem is he never did that successfully.
He criticises John Howard for getting on the airwaves incessantly and thereby demeaning the office of PM, but Howard clearly had some success in how the game of politics is played.
‘What they knew was some grotesque media construct.’
Indeed, and yet said construct looks positively sober and realistic beside the much more grotesque media construct that they have now fashioned out of Julia Gillard. There appears now to be a total disconnect between the actual person, her improvement-with-experience and her poised, focused functioning under now near-unbearable pressure (could anyone here have survived last week in her shoes, what with CHOGM, Qantas, Abbott and Rudd?), on the one hand, and, on the other, the hateful witch-puppet fashioned by the people who want the conservatives back in power.
But I do think Keating’s legacy is the energy of people who appreciated what he was doing and who carry on some of his ideas as best they can in areas like public policy and indeed the best of the meeja. And his continuing influence and popularity with people much younger than he is means this isn’t a passing thing.
That’s true Brian @ 9, which is what I was getting at. Seems like the rhetoric has been ramped up to a level approaching hysteria these days, however.
Eric Sykes @ 8 – yes it’s probably worth a visit, even without the river views!
This country is as usual at sixes and sevens’ about what it wants. Or maybe somewhere more like 65%- 20% & 15% couldn’t give a toss–quite literaly.
Since Howardian aspirationals got a firm foot in the door and the culture of globalisation and its dismal consquences have infected us we have moved far away from the relatively parochial days of a Keating government that sought to be a bit more $ savvy than a Whitlam–and succeeded spectacularly in ushering in the full blown Neo-Con. Keating was a pioneering economic rationalist– a ‘spiv’ let’s not forget that he made us justify our art in ‘market terms’ and in the light of what was economically ‘rational’. He was no saint.
I think your point is politics is derivative.
I might have more enthusiasm for Keating if I wasn’t so keenly aware that he trashed the work of the Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups, squibbed their proposal for a price on carbon, and generally presided over a rash of very bad decisions on environmental issues and a total deterioration of relations between Federal Labor and the environmental movement.
But are we living in Keating’s Australia? I read Larvatus Prodeo and see how far away we are from meaningful engagement with Asia. Asia appears here as a subset of international news, as disruptive interventions in the smooth flow of daily Anglophone discourse with Australia, the US and the UK as its loci, with little sense of tracking or aligning with the flow of Asian public political and social life.
My take on Keating at the time was that Keating took great delight in implementing the policies that Howard would have implemented when he was treasurer if Frazer hadn’t stopped him. In this context it is worth noting that Frazer was often to the left of Keating on both economic and refugee issues.
Also keep in mind that Howard’s biggest enduring change was the GST – which Keating wanted but was blocked from by Hawke. (Howard’s revenge?
I think with all the overseas students that now study at universities across Australia it’s a generational wait until some of them move into key postions in their homelands and we will hopefully have leaders in the region with a better feel for Australia. They will hopefully dispell the latent impression of ‘racist’ country that still pervades from the WAP.
The Europeans love talk of ‘soft diplomacy’ that world news services can bring but getting Australians to care is difficult. How can an Australian relate to another in Malaysia/Japan/Singapore/China if we never see a human interest story in our lifetime?
Ain’t that the truth, Pav @ 10. But, sadly it isn’t just people who want the Libs back in power.
@10
Just came from the coffee shop. 3 out of 4 stories on the front page of the Australian were obvious attempts to boas a story against the govt. or unions (no mention of the former editor’s despicable behaviour). When I walk back into the lobby of the building there’s Sky News screeching the same lines. Things were bad for Keating as well but I think we are now seeing really unrestrained and unabashed propaganda.
Keating was at the very least partly responsible for his media construct. The “recession we had to have” was a media blunder of the highest order.
The reason the country “is at sixes and sevens as to what it wants” may be because we are 22,000,000 different people.
Update: There are some highlights of Keating’s conversation with Richard Fidler at the Powerhouse last night in this Fairfax story.
Ta Brian for the link to the Richard Fiddler Keating conversation. Great.
Agree too with Fine and Patrickb re Pav@10.
Thanks, Brian, I’ll add the link to the post. PJK’s appearance last night was also a facilitated conversation with Richard Fidler (who did a very good job), and they covered quite a bit of the same ground, so it gives a good sense, too, of what he was talking about last night.
Thanks Paul Norton, 14 – that’s a critical qualifier (enviro) and encourages a quick glance back also to the (NSW) right wing,anti intellectual and social conservative culture that has strangled Labor over time, like a weed strangling a cottage garden shrub.
Well, I think it’s quite wrong to describe Paul Keating personally as “anti-intellectual”.
It is, of course, reasonable to raise questions about the policies and directions of the Hawke and Keating government. But, again, it would be wrong to suggest that the Labor Party in that era was somehow captured by its right wing for the first time. Gough Whitlam, after all, was in the right, and paved his way to the Prime Ministership by smashing the socialist left control of the Victorian branch of the ALP.
Nor do I think there’s much sense in describing the Hawke and Keating governments as ‘socially conservative’. It’s hard to square that with (for instance) the introduction of the Sex Discrimination Act in 1984.
In fact, my argument would be that the foundations of much of what we do enjoy as a cosmopolitan and socially liberal people were reinforced, if not laid, in the Keating era. That’s something to which I alluded in the post.
More broadly, while it’s easy to make a claim like ‘Paul Keating took the ALP down the neo-liberal road’, most who make such a claim fail to place themselves under any obligation to specify how things might have been done differently. I’m myself quite critical in this vein, but I think the internationalisation of the economy and the circumstances Keating confronted in the 1980s were real, and required a response. I would have liked it not to have been one which involved privatisation, but, conversely, the true impact of the social wage and much greater participation in high school and university education should not be discounted.
And then there’s Mabo and the real courage PJK displayed in taking on powerful vested interests, not the least of which were in the ALP and in the mining companies, in crafting a legislative response to the High Court’s recognition of native title. I wouldn’t underestimate the degree to which that cost him the 1996 election.
the circumstances Keating confronted in the 1980s were real … I would have liked it not to have been one which involved privatisation
Keating didn’t privatise anything in the 1980s. He did privatise plenty (as PM) in the 1990s (Qantas, the Commonwealth Bank and CSL come immediately to mind) but not because he was responding to the internationalisation of the economy.
I think it’s quite wrong to describe Paul Keating personally as “anti-intellectual”
Keating wasn’t anti-intellectual, be he was anti-intellectuals, apart from himself (as he saw it). Those who worked with him at the time will regale you with stories about how he was in thrall to bi ideas about policy — provided he thought that they were his.
In the 80s governments the world over came to recognise that politically managed exchange rates and interest rates were political black holes that would consume administrations. These governments shrugged these responsibilities with greater or lesser alacrity, depending upon their ideological bent.
Some surprising hold-outs got burned. Who can forget Norman Lamont’s determination in 1992 to defend the value of sterling against George Soros’ attacks, an act of folly that transferred more than £3b from the British public purse to Soros’ bank account?
These acts by governments around the world, including the Hawke-Keating government, were major concessions of the commanding heights from governments to competing private financial interests.
Sam, yes, the first privatisations happened in the early 1990s. Perhaps I didn’t express myself well, because what I intended to suggest was that they were part of the ongoing ‘economic reform’ direction taken by the Labor governments from 1983 to 1996, and a part which I think was not just wrong but quite unnecessary.
I don’t agree, though, that privatisation had nothing to do with Keating’s desire to respond to and accelerate the internationalisation of the economy. Clearly, the idea that privatisation would foster competition and also capital raising for the privatised entities was part and parcel of a broader agenda.
Agree totally with the first par. On the second, I have previously argued, and would still argue, that more of the socially liberal agenda was done on Hawke’s watch than on Keating’s, and with more political success.
Even though I like his occasional quips I don’t care for Keating. His and Hawke’s legacy is everything that is wrong with the Labor Party today, too right-wing. I always felt Keating’s true home was in the Liberal Party.
Lets not forget he was right behind the attempted privatisation of electricity in NSW too.
While I would not go to the opposite extreme, I certainly don’t think that the public rejection of Keating as a political personality is equivalent to public rejection of the agenda associated with him.
I think you would have to go a long way down the list to find a Treasurer who was popular qua Treasurer. It’s not a position that facilitates a warm public image. Keating’s 8 years as Treasurer pretty much cemented his public persona, although undoubtedly his ‘attack dog’ style in Parliament also contributed.
Howard @20 I think the reaction to the ‘recession we had to have’ line was a sad example of the risk in over estimating the public. It was trusting the public with a truth they didn’t want to hear.
Keating had plenty of attitudes to disagree with. But he was (is) not afraid of ideas, and had a vision which he fought for. Unlike today’s politicians who compromise their vision (if they ever had one) to remain popular.
I’d identify the ‘clever country’ with Keating. Sadly ever since it’s been more a ‘what could have been’ thing as we focus more on being a quarry and farm. But there was a creative energy under his government that even now still has a little momentum. I think this is what you’re identifying Mark.
I also think this what we hoped for from Kevin07.
Though if they’d sold it a decade or so ago they would have got a lot more money (even in numerical terms, let alone real terms) than they will if they sold it now.
Mark Bahnisch waxes lyrical:
Yes the “cold dead hand of Joh Bjelke Petersen”, who more or less paved the way for the Gold Coast and Queensland’s emergence as a mining giant state. And whose National Party built much of the government infrastructure that the wonderful warm vibrant Anna Bligh just flogged off for a song the Big End of Town.
Creative Class wankery might make for a pleasant evening listening to Keating give himself yet another pat on the back. But it doesn’t build nations.
I remember mentioning here my opinion that Red Ted was an important bourgeoisifying* Labor politician, and Kim responded by telling me that that was impossible, ‘cos Theodore had been a bush unionist who carried a swag and slept under the stars. Didn’t have the heart to tell her I’d been influenced in this thinking by Palmer’s books (and it’s not as if Palmer presents the story arc of his Theodore analogue as the journey of a happily unconcerned Labor sellout—if anything his Macy Donovan is the kind of conflicted Leftwinger the real Red Ted wasn’t.)
Of the Labor leaders who were able to achieve some success in moving the party towards the stormy waters of, ah, modifying party tradition I see a direct line from pre-war Billy Hughes to Theodore to Evatt to Whitlam to Hawke & Keating.
This is an interesting subject in light of what you guys have been saying about the Greens being too middle class.
*There really is no other way to look at Theodore’s self-taught financial market wonkery—the first Australian leader to go to Wall Street to finance public debt, IIRC—and his personal enjoyment of the good life.
The light on the hill:
They’re counting up the votes across Australia
And counting down the seconds of my years
I’ve seen quite a few elections
I know how to read projections
I can recognise a change when it appears
The people make the ultimate decision
The system says they always get it right
So though it seems like half an hour
Since I stumbled into power
Now it’s time for me to say goodnight.
But still I dream
Of a country rich and clever
With compassion and endeavour
Reaching out towards forever, and I’m still
Dreaming of the light on the hill.
You start off in your local council chamber
You fight and dream until you reach your prime
And if you should succeed
By the time you get to lead
You’re pretty much exhausted from the climb
You only get a moment in the penthouse
Before you find you’re standing on the sill
And if you’re sunk in ham and gammon
When it turns from feast to famine
Then you’re lucky if you’ve had your fill.
But still I dream
Heads are high and hearts are heady
Eyes are bright and clear and steady
Full of promise that we’re ready to fulfill
I’m dreaming of the light on the hill.
They’re counting up the votes across Australia
This time it seems the verdict is severe
Swan, McEwen, Fadden, Dickson,
Bass and Paterson and Kingston
But it’s Oxley with the message, loud and clear:
“Bring us back our comfy bloody country
Take us back to simple days of yore
Nothing alien or scary,
La-de-da or airt-fairy
Just put it back the way it was before.”
But still I dream
That the stars will be aligning
As our fates are intertwining
Until every heart is shining with goodwill
Shining like the light on the hill,
Shining like the light on the hill.
Paul Keating not a fan of Q&A or Tony Jones:
http://www.tvtonight.com.au/2011/11/keating-wouldnt-be-caught-dead-on-q-a.html
I’m sure I heard Leigh Sales say tonight that Keating is going to be on 7.30 this Monday night too.
And of course he’s a regular on ‘Lateline’ – with Tony Jones.
I heard Leigh Sales say tonight
Is she in the family way? She looks it.
Ha – Keating’s spot on about Q&A as well.
Jack Strocchi @35, are you having a lend of us or do you really think creation of a 50 kilometre long abode of bogans and traffic hazard to complicate Brisbane residents’ holiday journeys to and from Byron Bay is an example of nation building?
Stay classy, Sam.
‘nothing is so improving to the temper as the study of the beauties either of poetry, eloquence, music, or painting. They give a certain elegance of sentiment to which the rest of mankind are strangers. The emotions which they excite are soft and tender. They draw off the mind from the hurry of business and interest; cherish reflection; dispose to tranquillity; and produce an agreeable melancholy, which, of all dispositions of the mind, is the best suited to love and friendship.’
D Hume – Of The Delicacy Of Taste And Passion
What about: none of our frickin’ business, Sam?
” … a 50 kilometre long abode of bogans … ”
Bogans have to live somewhere, too, Paul. They have rights, just like the rest of us. To see them in any other light would be snobbery.
I’m still waiting for my L-A-W tax cuts.
Very astute, PC. And some evidence of that with Ken Henry and Parkinson in Treasury and Glenn Stevens in the Reserve Bank. It seems clearer there than among the pollies, albeit Roxon, Plibersek and Combet might be following that path. And while Sam has a point about Swan, he won’t go too far wrong listening to these blokes.
I would have said similar about Gough in an earlier age. What he did was inspirational but perhaps his greatest legacy was the range of talent in cabinet under Hawke in 83. Most entered politics because of that inspiration and resolved not to get trapped by the issues that plagued Gough’s team.
I’ve found that there’s only one criticism of Keating that lefties respond to. It’s not the fact that his mannerisms were abusive and bullying (hell, they respect that because they feel that his victims were well chosen). It’s not the “recession we had to have” and the huge suffering it caused – lefties either think his economic actions were justified, necessary, or not the cause of the recession.
It’s the fact that he was the President of the Suharto Fan Club.
Stick that in your realities.
Dave @49, I reckon I could build a tall ship out of the chip on your shoulder.
Most of the lefties I know despise Keating (while conceding his sharp wit).
David Irving (no relation): many hate him, many love him.
More comments from PJK in today’s The Age.
They didn’t come, Paul, because they didn’t want to end up where you were leading them.
Love his comments about immigration and citizenship, coming from the leader of the government that introduced mandatory detention.
Labor didn’t lose it’s story, so much as it was changed, and Keating was perhaps the main architect of that alteration of the “Labor story”.
Something in that, too, Howard.
Clyde Cameron once remarked that he thought Keating would make an excellent Labor PM … if he could just get him alone in a room long enough to explain ALP policy.