What a character! Thank you for sharing!
I initially mistook Paul Keating for the Australian equivalent of that variety of American congressmen from Texas or thereabouts who like to carry or present themselves with a certain "cowboy swag."
Then I realized that Paul Keating may have very well inspired Kevin Spacey's portrayal of the fictional bisexual American Congressman, the honorable gentleman from South Carolina, and later Vice President and President of these United States, the legendary Frank Underwood of when Netflix was actually still any good.
From the looks of it, Keating, who is obviously very talented with his tongue, came from rather humble roots with little formal education, especially when compared to the vast majority of his political peers.
He almost seems like the type who could've potentially made for a successful communist revolutionary, at a fairly young age like Fidel Castro, had he been born and raised in one of Britain's "darker" colonies on its way towards independence.
Keating was and remains a scary figure to be on the wrong side of*. Not only is he a fantastic orator with a vicious tongue, but he also has more intellectual gravitas than 90% of the modern political class, yet without the privileged background and the prejudices and blindspots that typically accompany that. He can credibly be described as one of the key architects of modern Australia, not only through his role as Treasurer throughout the 1980s, overseeing the floating of the currency, introduction of superannuation, and other influential if contestable economic innovations, but also the embrace of multiculturalism, republicanism, gestures toward reconciliation with indigenous Australians and a vision of Australia discovering its own unique identity
within Asia. Of course there was a very considerable and sustained backlash against Keating and the ideas he represented, but as the stories say: you can never go home again, and we are still living in the nation that he helped to shape. Indeed, for a long time Labor suffered from the problem of how to move beyond playing the role of
.
* I mean, what do you even do when the streetfighter is also the public intellectual who is also the great statesman? It's like when the final boss comes back with another pair of arms and a laser cutter. You're just fucked.
Unfortunately, Labor
has moved past Keating, such that his
about AUKUS now falls on deaf ears. He still commands an audience and folks listen with respect and acknowledge his legacy -- and then they move on.
So are any of these moderates, who are cognizant of Australian-American misalignments, and presumably the necessity of a productive and healthy relationship with Beijing, which may lead to certain convergences, as persuasive or charismatic as Keating, or potentially on track towards occupying ministerial positions that will allow for a meaningful reassessment of Australian foreign policy?
The moderate wing of the Liberal party (the Liberals being the greater partner in the Coalition with the National party) is now very much an endangered species, as the party has moved further to the right since the moderate Malcom Turnbull was ousted as Prime Minister in 2018. The diminution of moderate voices within the formerly "broad church" of the Liberal party (former Prime Minister John Howard's characterisation) is now serious enough that a new group of "teal" independents has sprung up to hold several seats in the current parliament, attracting economically Liberal but socially progressive folk from the professional classes who would formerly have been accommodated within the Liberal party, but are unable to stomach the cultural and environmental aspects of its current direction e.g. ongoing devotion to coal and hostility to renewable energy.
Even if Labor were required to form a minority government with parties like the Greens that profess to be opposed to AUKUS, I doubt that they would be willing to put defence or foreign policy matters on the table in any power-sharing arrangement, and there are plenty of other ways for Labor or the Coalition to secure the support of minor parties and independents if required. At most they would tinker around the edges.
A continuation of the status quo is about the best that can be hoped for in terms of Australia-China relations in the near-term: open channels of communication, real if modest opportunities for cooperation where possible, not "puffing out their big boy chests". There is almost no prospect of Australia walking away from its relationship with the United States. I previously would've said
zero prospect, but there is now Donald Trump and his mercurial whims and threats against other notional allies to consider. So:
almost zero. That said, our approach to Trump to date has been to act as quiet as a mouse in the hopes that he won't notice us, and for better or worse that seems to be working. And why wouldn't it work? It's not often that you get to buy a continent for the price of a few submarines. I'm not sure even Trump can aspire to a better deal for America. That said, within the boundaries of strategic continuity there is still a renewed awareness of risk and the possibility of incremental hedging. We would be talking here of shuffling sideways a few millimeters at a time. I'll write about a specific hypothetical example later.
