PM Transcripts

PRIME MINISTER
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH THE PRIME MINISTER, THE HON.
P J KEATING, M. P.
THE ECONOMIST ROUNDTABLE, HYATT HOTEL, CANBERRA
THURSDAY 24 MARCH, 1994
PM: Well, I'm going to missGraham as a colleague and as a friend, particularly as a
fiend. We've been friends now for nearly a couple of decades. And, as a
colleague he was somebody who believes that good policy is good politics. He
was part of the shift in the culture not just of the Labor Party but of the
country, the Government the shift that Australia should have had twenty or
thirty years earlier. He held major portfolios with distinction, he ran major
agendas. He was not only effective in developing policy, effective in the
Cabinet room as well, in their carriage, but he was effective in going out and
selling them. He was effective in communicating policies. So, he is going to
be missed but as he has just, himself, eloquently said, we've got a store of new
ministers and members truly regenerating the Labor government. And, it's
never been our business to run our assets into the ground, we don't expect
people to retire exhausted.
So, I wish him well in his life in the future and Cheryl, his wife and his family.
All families pay a price in public life, Graham's has paid a big price over a very
long period of time not just in elective office but before in the machine of the
party. And he can pride himself on being one of the generation that didn't shirk
the challenge, that didn't throw the pass like twenty odd years of Coalition
ministers did. He can leave public life with his head high, as somebody who
saw a challenge and did his best to meet it.
J: When did Senator Richardson tell you that he was leaving?
PM: About a week ago, a bit over a week ago.
J: Did you make any money fromfthe piggery?
PM: I made a decision to divest myself of that. I was not going to have my partners
in that pilloried by cowards under privilege twenty two months is long
enough.
Ends.