I. TRANSCRIPT OF THlE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON P. J. KEAING MP,
INTERVIEW WITH MAXINE MCKEW, " TALKS WITH THE PRIME
MINISTERS" SERIES, ABC " AM RECORDED 3 SEPTEMBER 1992
E OE PROOF COPY
MM: Primc Minister in 1967 when we were listening to rcports about Vietnam,
when we were singing songs like " Light My Fire" and " Friday on My
Mind", you were 23 years old, you were two years away from a career in
Canberra, what was on your mind in those days?
PM: I was then at that stagc pretty well devoted to securing myself a scat in
Parliament, but I was as mutch a product of the ' 60s as most other people
were at the time. I was interested in the popular music you spcak about, we
had this debilitating war going on in Vietnam which was an upsetting
background fcature to most people's lives, they didn't quite understand all
the issues involved. But for my part I was at that stage very heavily
committed to coming to the H-ouse of Representatives.
MM: What was i t in your background that propelled you towards a political
career?
PM: Public life offered a smorgasbord of things that so many things could be
achicved if one could A: know what should be donc and B3: how to operate
the system to do it.
MM: What was it you wanted to do? Was it an ambition for yourself, did you
have an idcal, a combination of both?
PM: It was a combination of both, I think most people who come into public life
are well motivated, are altruistic, I certainly was. A lot of people have
asked about the influences on my political life, what excited me, thc only
two people that ever excited me in history was primarily Churchill and
followed a close second by Roosevelt, they were the two that I thought well
if that's the business they're in, that's the business I should be in.
MM: What is it about those two historic figures that excites you?
PM: lust that they would take positions and do things and they had that sense of
leadership about them where they would not always take the safe position,
not do the conventional thing and they had breadth about them and while
each made mistakes they were always exciting.
MM: It's interesting, you nominate two foreign leaders and you have said, of
course, that you feel Australia has never produced a great leader. Do you
still stand by that?
PM: I'm not sure the occasions arc there where one might have come through. I
made the point a couple of years ago in the United States they seem to come
through at the right time for them, with Washington at the time of the
Revolution, with Lincoln during the Civil War, with Roosevelt during the
collapse of robber Baron capitalism re-establishing the. social and economic
order and that leadership told on the United States, it became a very great
country as a result of those important turning points. We've never had a
Civil War and all those social stresses so I suppose the conditions produce
the people.
MM: If you haven't any local heroes you certainly had some..
PM: No, there were people I was interested in and had a great abiding interest in
and affection for like Theodorc and Curtin and Lang and people like that.
MM: Lang was an important early mentor was he not, or is that overstated
somewhat?
PM: It is very much overstated. I knew him well, very well in fact, but he was at
Henry Parkcs' rallies and he would give you a pen sketch of their
personalities, Parkes, Latham, Holman, Storey, Isaac Isaacs.
MM: Is that why you sought out his company? He was some sort of connection
to the past and you wanted to know about that?
PM: Yes and he was intcrested in young people. He would always open himself
up to young people and hc gavc me a tremendous amount of lime, but he
used to think I was unimpressed with his economic and social views and by
and large I was, but he was always so good spirited and he could teach you a
lot. And so you felt you knew all these char acters, or you had some real
feeling about them.
MM: Has that been important to you throughout your career, that sense of being
connected to Labor's past?
PM: It gives you bearings, it gives you bearings throughout the nation so
certainly in the history of the Federation it gives you bearings.
MM: You came to Canberra in 1969 which was an election that Labor nearly won
and you came here I suppose as a pretty young impatient young man and
you came to..
PM: I wasn't that impatient, I like to think I was canny enough not to be
impatient.
MM, But you came to a parliamentary party that had a lot of older men who were
used to waiting for government. How did that strike you?
PM: Yes, that was a pity, the two forces which play against the Labor Party was
the First World War and communism. The First World War, Gallipoli,
Flanders snuffcd out a lot of the social experimentation and nationalism
which caused us to federate, where we formed the Labor Party and where
we did so many novel, social things in the first fifteen or so years of the
century and the conservatives wrapped the flag around it all and then made
quite a radical thing, young men walking off the land and serving abroad,
turned quite a radical thing and a conservative thing and of course a very
divisive thing for the Labor Party. The belief that communism in some way
centrally planned economics and the problems of the depression that
communism hcld out some sort of option which was taken up by the
intellectual Left in Britain, Australia and other places produced a lot of
division in the Labor Party as thc polarities of the party shifted towards
central planning as distinct from open markets and market operated
economies. And the Cold War, the expression of all that in the Cold War
and the stretched loyalties there were instnimental in Menzies having such a
free nin wvith the DLP to keep us out of office for a quarter of a century.
Without either Australia would have been a much more prosperous, more
united place, a more progressive place and Labor probably would havc been
the dominating party throughout the history of the Federation.
MM: Did you find though that there were some people here in ' 69 who still had
paralysing views about the past?
PM: A lot of people here were here twenty years at that stage, came in ' 49, had
no office and were very jaded, not all of course, some were terrific, but
many were jaded and disappointed, but they used their opportunity and did
their best, just that they lacked that experience which would have come with
a more natural party of government, one that had been around more often.
MM: You came here with an immediate interest in economics which is very
unusual for the time.
PM: It wasn't, I wouldn't be too haughty about it Maxine, I wouldn't say it was an
interest where I had all the economic theories at my fingertips, but I was
intercsted in economic issues and in the creation of national wealth and I
always saw the creation of national wealth as the passport to most
Australians getting their share of income and all the other things. So my
focus when T arrived, just about everyone in the parliamentary party was
interested in foreign policy, the Foreign Affairs Committee was everyone in
the Caucus bar about two or three and in social policy.* I remember Gough
Whitlamn saying in the late ' 60s our job is basically to distribute the
abundance, that is to carve up the wealth and that was a pretty reasonable
view given the history of the ' 50s and the
MM: But would you say the problem was no one talked about creating the
wealth?
PM: T'hc basis of the wealth was falling apart, hut it was not apparent to people,
that is the terms of tradc post War had turned sharply against us, but it was
not apparent. It was only apparent in thc ' 70s and that's when of course, the
remedy should have been undcrtaken. As it turns out they were left until the
so it is very easy to say at this point with this hindsight, but back there
in 1969-70 ' 71-72 you had to be very perceptive to see the terms of trade
shifting so markedly, that is the former dependence upon commodities
being in a position to let us down.
MM: How did Gough Whitlam trcat you in those days, did he dismiss you
because you didn't have a tertiary education?
PM: Yes, Gough and I have been on and off over the years. I liked him because
he was interesting, he understood that Australia had become a backwater
and that we were too much a derivative society and we needed to break out
of it and that's what really " Its Time" thing was about, but he said to me one
day I judge a man by the number of questions he puts on the Notice Paper
and I thought God, I'm going to fail here for sure because politically I
thought it was never a political thing to do to ask your opponent questions,
because they mostly give you the wrong answers.
MM: You were pretty socially conservative when you came to this place, your
maiden speech talked about the view of the family, women staying at home.
PM: That's the sort of society, the part of Australian life I grew up in and in the
quarter century that's passed, I've changed my views about that and not only
that, in the last decadc played, I think, I hope anyway a reasonable role in
facilitating some of that change.
MM: You think there'-, now a much broader role for women?
PM: One of the great changes in the last twenty five years since " AM" first
began is the role of women in Australian society. Today relations between
women and men are different than they were in 1967.
MM: Better?
PM: Absolutely, the sheer mode of address one would undertake at a political
meeting or a gathering then and now is totally different.
MM: It sometimes seems to many people though that men and women are at war
with each other.
PM: It's takcn some years for women to adjust to their new role, their greater
opportunities in society, in education, in thc work place and it's taken men
some years later to adjust to that. But it's a happy adjustment, I'm not saying
it is without friction, but the end result is a pleasing one.
MM: Have you consciously reinvented yourself over the years?
PM: In what sense do you mean?
MM: Are we seeing something of a metamorphosis now from someone who
believed in classical economics to someone who perhaps could be
characterised as a born again Whitlamite?
PM: No, I've always believed that the ' 80s was the decade that finished off
communism and monetarism, it put them both asunder, that is the belief that
private initiative, private reward, chasing moncy supply targets and these
things were the salvation of everybody, no one believes that now anymore
than they..
MM: Didn't you embrace that to a certain extcnt?
PM: No, never and if you look at communism that the state and central planning
was thc answer is no longer an answer either. It has bcen the triumph of the
thoughts of the social democracies, the social democratic parties which I
think have emerged from the ' 80s best, that is what we've done; construct an
open market economy, but where a social policy has been stitched into it in
such things as access for health, which we began in 1983 or more equal
access to education which we began about the same time or better aged care
or child care to give women some freedom in life to pursue the things they
want to pursue, All those sorts of things occupational supcranntuation with
the work force, these are all early to mid ' 80s things. In talking about them
now, we're talking about them in the context that the great change of the
that Labor presided over and that I was involved with was employment, the
huge ratc of employment with a work force today 26 per cent larger than it
was in ' 83. It's in the context of unemployment that we arc focussing on the
social policy and in the context of the John Hewson view of the world that
you socially impoverish the place and thcn as I said a day or so ago a whole
lot of little Hewsons will rise from the ashcs; God help you if you don't rise.
And we're saying there's got to be something better than that, that is you
don't tear up cherished institutions and cherished institutional arr angements,
you don't sacrifice those things part of a country's soul and progress is
these social changes and we should keep them.
MM: Has there not been some evolutionary changes though in yourself? Gough
Whitlam earlier this week suggested that after you stopped being Treasurer
you took a long period to do some reflecting and you emerged with quite a
differcnt perspective. Isn't that correct?
PM: Only moderately, I haven't changed my tune much in my basic view of
things since I first came to the House of Representatives. I'm smarter and
wiser for the experience I hope, I've been just simply living through a lot of
these changes has bccn important, but I think if you've got time you do
reflect on things. You and I wcrc just speaking about thc role of women,
but two of thc other great influences of the last twenty five years, certainly
the last ten years has been the education of the trade unions. Their role in
Australian society in thc last decade has been an exemplary one, that is in
making the place more competitive and being at the lcading edge of training
and productivity of social change, of getting up social programs; things like
the Family Allowance Supplement or occupational superannuation and the
leaders of the trade union movement can take great pridc in that. Another
thing which upon reflection makes apparent is that we are now investing in
our most valuable resource, if you look at the resources boom mentality of
the 170s, the most valuable resources of course our childrcn and we're now
being certain that seven in ten complete secondary school, 40 per cent go on
to universities, we're hoping that will soon be nine in ten; a decade ago it
was threc in ten.
MM: Having raised the trade union question and having talked to all the Prime
Ministers this week one can't help but look at this question and that is that if
Bill Kelty had behaved during the ' 80s with the H-awke Government in the
way that perhaps Bob Hawke behaved towards the Whitlam Government
when Mr Hawke was ACrU chief, things would have been very different.
PM: I think the unions were greatly dehilitated by the late ' 70s experience. The
profit share had been smashed to pieces, and with it investment and
employment, and they came to the conclusion that chasing nominal wages
growth was really leading to unemployment. And like a lot of very honest
people, when one honestly understands a fact one responds to it. And they
did en masse, and their leadership took the responsibility of telling them and
teaching them that. So, wc can he grateful that someone as conscientious
and as Australian, if I can say that, as Bill Kelty came along because I think
he had the intellectual grasp and the leadership and the courage to pull the
thing the right way. But again, even he couldn't have done that I don't think
in the 1970s. It needed that cathartic experience of the late ' 70s, that wage
explosion and the rest, to bring them along. But they have been, as an
institution, one of the leading institutional forces for change.
MM: Gough Whitlam made the point this week that the only thing that Bob
Hawke had going for him was the Accord, and beyond that he only had one
ambition, to be Prime Minister.
PM: Well I think that's unfair to Bob. H-e has understood more about the basis of
the importance of wealth and letting the economy be efficient, and to get out
there and take our share in the post-war trade in goods and services which
passed Australia by. That was the terrible thing of the ' 60s, that we believed
in thc commodities absolutely. It was wheat and wool and minerals and that
was it. But the trade which made Japan strong and Germany strong had
passed us by, not just In goods but in services. And as a result our kids and
our people didn't have the interesting jobs thcy could have had. And
changing Australia to undertake that huge odyssey out into the world
economy was what the ' 80s was about. And I think Bob understood that, he
had a lot of helpers but hy and large he had enough wisdom about him to
understand that.
MM: Now that you're in the job, what is it do you think that defines good
leadership?_
PM: Leadership has always been about being out in front, striking out, and trying
to bring up support behind you if you're the Icader, making judgements and
taking risks, and encouraging people, exciting people to do things.
MM: Do you think the question of changing the flag is an illustration, though, that
you can't be too risky, you can't afford to get too far ahcad of public
opinion?
PM: All the more reason to just to make the point, truths are absolute. We can
never be so tricky that we move away firom truths. When you get around as
a country with the flag of another country in the corner of your flag, you are
not representing yourself as best you can. Now what that means in terms of
the attachment people have to existing emblems and the methodology and
the mode of changing them, that's a different matter. But I think it's
important for lcaders to speak about these things.
MM: Are you still committed to changing the flag?
PM: I've said it should only change with a plebiscite. I don't think any
government has got the right to just impress its vicw on the whole nation
about emblematic or constitutional things. But it's important to know, we
had this very day a Minister in the Thai Government saying if Australians
are more clcar about themselves, if they want to do business with Asia, if
they wish to he part of the regional community, we will welcome them with
open arms. I mean, wc'vc really been waiting for it. I think the important
thing is being certain about who you are and what you are.
MM: Do you think that's one of our problems, we are too ambivalent, too many of
us love the country but it also drives us crazy? Arc you a hit like that, you
get frustrated with the place?
PM: I think you get frustrated with all every country has got its problems, but
MM: We do seem to have a particular identity problem, don't we?
PM: This was a derivative place, and still to some extent is, and shaking that off
has been what the last quarter of a century has been about. But migration,
multiculturalism, doing something new here in world terms with this
community, taking more pride in our own intrinsic worth and value and
what our own culture means and stands for, reflecting the fact that we are
living on the oldest land mass on the face of the earth in a continent, a
continent which was inherited by black people, coming to tcrnms with that
and them, is all part of making tip Australia and Australians. And we're
now much more clear ahout that, aren't wc? I mean, everybody is.
MM: If we are to know who we are and be confident about that, we need a new
flag, we need a republic?
PM: We need In the first instance to know that it is important to be yourself.
Now that is not universally known or accepted in Australia. It's important to
be yourself, to be proud of what you are and to be better than what you are.
MM: Any timetable?
PM: Let me just say this. Thc neighbourhood of this area, where we've got very
large societies, and old socicties, Malaysia and younger ones, Singapore,
and the rest there's a great opportunity for Australia. But taking the view
that they're the places we fly over to somewhere else and you look at Jakarta
from 35,000 fcet is not, I don't think, an option for Australia.
MM: Prime Minister, as we're reflecting historically, do you think we're still
bedevilled by the fact that wc tend to celebrate losers in this country, we
celebrate losers and losses?
PM: Yes, there's a great underdog syndrome in the place, which is a nice thing in
some respects, as long as it doesn't overtake us so that the best people are
draggcd down by it. And there's too much of that in Australia, there's too
much of the tall poppy problem, tall poppy syndrome. People think it's
elitist and elitism is frowned upon. Well the elite people encourage others
and give them heart and inspiration. Look at this young group of
Olympians, some of who I met last night returning again to some of the
celebrations, and they will all be inspiration to Australian young people in
sport, and in many other respects, for years to come. And whether it be in
the arts, or business, or where ever it might be, we've got to get over this
notion that we drag people down, we hop into them because they've got
talent so let's nail them, this sort of view.
MM: You referred, last weekend at the 20th Anniversary of the Whitlam
Government at thc dinner, you said that what Gough Whitlam understood
was thc need to lift the national spirit and to excite people. We could do
with a bit of that now, couldn't we?
PM: Yes, you can always do with it I think. But thcre I was reflccting upon that
which I said to you a few moments ago, that the thing is in the ' 60s the place
was still very much a derivative place and we were not making declarations
about ourselves and what it was like to be an Australian or Australia playing
a more independent role for itself in the world, and I think Gough was very
much'associated with that ' coming out' after the 25 years of Menzies, the
Menzian age. And it was exciting. The ' 80s were cxciting too, for different
reasons. It was, I think, one of the most exciting decades. No doubt a lot of
silly things were done, but it was very exc iting as well.
MM: What silly things were done?
PM: Spreading money around, 20 per cent credit growth a year, and all that sort
of thing which was rather debilitating in the final analysis. But, still you
look at Australia comparing the end of the ' 80s to the beginning of the
and it is really to bc compared as a more exciting place, a more exciting
country. Tourism, for instance, didn't exist at the beginning of the
financial services, educational services, all of these various things we were
doing, films. There's always a place for excitement, but the problem we've
had recently is unemployment produces a pall over the economy and over
society and it's a bit hard to even if it was one's want to suggest to people
to throw that off and look beyond it, as I think there's a very exciting future
in the 1990s for Australia. For the moment people are dealing with our
condition with the gravity it deserves.
MM: So one can't be inspirational, particularly in 1992, it's a lot harder?
PM: One can be inspirational, but one can't be I don't think frivolous, and
frivolity had its place in the scheme of things in the
MM: When you became Prime Minister you said it was a humbling experience,
and other Primc Ministers this week have referred to the constraints of
office. How have you found it?
PM: Constraints of office are obvious to any practitioners of this place. We all
know the li mitations of it. In terms of it being humbling, I think it is
humbling because in thc Prime Ministership is invested, in some respects,
the ideal of the nation and its aspirations, and that's quite a lot to invest in
any one office or person. And if you happen to be the person in the office, I
think it's humbling.
MM: Bob Hawke also said this week when you come to the job you lose your
private life, but you of course insist on a private life.
PM: Well one can never insist upon it, of course we have journos who upset it.
MM: Do you resent that?
PM: In a sort of good natured kind of way I suppose I do. I think you can have it
if you wish, or remain a sort of normal person. I still get about the place, no
matter where I am I always walk around by myself, or I go into shops or
buildings or into cinemas or into theatres, or whatever it might be.
MM: You don't feel self conscious about that?
PM: No, I think if you move about freely it tends to be accepted, but if you
believe that onc should not move without an centourage and what have you
then you're a victim of your own circumstances. I think it's very
encouraging for Australians to think that the people who are managing their
affairs are normal, live normal lives.
MM: Do you ever feel that in projecting yourself, as you have to do in this job,
that there's a fine line you tread? There's a public persona and there's the
private man, are you worried about the tendency towards, I suppose,
phoniness that might bc involved in that?
PM: YCS, I can't stand phoniness or humbug, I can't stand it. And that, in some
respects, tells against me. I won't do the tricks and stunts that perhaps those
who've been more cynically advised might do. I can't naturally do them and
feel comfortable with them. If it's not real I'm not in it-
MM: Are you're minders telling you to do certain things that go against the grain?
PM: All minders will encourage you to do things which go against the grain, and
not that they are encouraging me or have they ever to do things which are
unnatural or which are phoney. I think you tend to attract the staff that
share your values. But every now and again you find yourself doing things
that you might not otherwise do.
MM: Such as?
PM: Whether it be..
MM: Tripping over the odd camera cable at the shopping mall?
PM: No, well I don't do that you see. If I go to a shopping mall I go there to
shop, I don't go there to accost shoppers.
MM: You must rcgret you came to the job as late as you did, that you didn't have
long to establish yourself before thc-election..
PM: Yes, I think that people should not try to stay on the stage too long. I think
there's a certain amount of perceptions, energy, horsepower, perspicacity, all
thcsc things that stay at the burn rate of this kind of change. Let's make this
clear, Australia has been through a decade of just phenomenal change, the
pace of change has been phenomenal. Anyone who had lived in the ' 70s or
knows that. In public life the burn rate is very high. And I think the
public also get disenchanted with the same personalitics doing the same
things, and they are right. They are right in saying look, we want you on the
stage for a while and give us your best and please quietly leave, hut a lot of
them want to hang on too long, and I think that's a shame.
MM: Would you leave if you lost the next election?
PM: Well I don't think I will ( lose), I don't think Australia is about to turn the
country over to somebody that doesn't really have any sort of institutional
respect for Australia for its institutions, its social fabric or its values. This
sort of hard hearted view that John Hcwson is proposing, that as I said
before, you socially Impoverish the place and In more spartan conditions
where economic athletes rise from the ashes, is; not I don't think acceptable
to Australians. That sort of view, or if you're in large business you're a
bloated illegitimate bureaucracy, if you're not self made you're no good.
This sort of thing. It's immature and I think Australians will spot the
phoniness of that, the immaturity of it.
MM: Finally Prime Minister, as it's our birthday I wonder if I could ask you if you
wouldn't mind telling us a bit of a story against yourself about a particular
morning whcn I happened to know you didn't listen to AM.
PM: Well I'm not an AM listcner. I used to be, but I think waking up to the
Weetbix with a bus being hit in Jerusalem or something else, tends to shake
you too quickly out of your slumber. I like to start on the newspapers and
gradually if I see a story I don't like I turn the next page and gradually move
into it, rather than the shock therapy you get with AM. When I was young I
could stand it, I can't thcsc days. But the day you're talking about was the
stock markct crash of 1.987.
MM: That's right.
PM: And I came into Parliament House, and the day before, that's right, on the
Friday thcrc had bccn a bit of a shake in the markets, and I walked in
Monday morning and the journalists said to me, well what do you think
about the stock market, which had collapsed over night and I didn't hear it, I
didn't know. And I said ' it's a correction, it's not to be I don't think one
should be fazed by this', or words to that cffect. And of course AM had
carried the story because it was an over night story. So I missed it.
Therefore thcre may be an omen in all that, or a moral in all that, that is
listen to AM.
MM: I do hope so. Prime Minister, thank you for your time.
PM: Thank you Maxine.
ends