Gareth Gareth tell me more...

I don’t know how many of you current readers read my somewhat soppy paean to Bobby Kennedy early in my blogging days.

I’ve recently seen Keating! for the second time. It was bloody brilliant, as I had expected it would be. Mike McLeish is sparkling as Keating, and the supporting cast was whip-snappingly good.

However, I had a lightning bolt moment on the way home which went something like this:

“Who would have thought that Keating is the Whitlam of our generation?”

I certainly didn’t hit on this until last Thursday. And when I saw that same show for the first time, it certainly escaped me. It was only last Thursday, at 10:37pm, that I saw the parallels for sadly unreconstructed lefties of my generation. Okay, so he wasn’t perfect (note to my generational forebears, neither was Whitlam….just saying) and he wasn’t always as left as we would have liked him to be, but for crying out loud, consider the alternative!

For me Keating, as a political phenomenon, has the same sadness attached to him as Kennedy (sans assassination, of course). It has been a constant horror to me that everything he began has been almost systematically undone by Howard. It’s clear they hate each other, but how much of what Howard has sought to achieve has been driven by his anti-Keating agenda?

I know some one who interviewed Keating a few years ago (unusual, he is quite the media recluse). This person came away from the meeting desolately depressed. She said to me “It’s just such a huge, huge loss to the nation. I sat there, and I couldn’t believe that we had let him go. Why did we do that?”

I think that part of the answer lies in Howard’s success. Keating certainly had us on a trajectory that required many people to step way outside their comfort zones in order to take a punt on the country being a better place to live. I’m sure not all were convinced by his vision.

But there are things that have been moved so far off the agenda now under the “reign” of Howard that in fact, perhaps their time has passed. In 1995, a treaty with our Indigenous brothers and sisters (achieved in so many other post-colonial nations) seemed a real possibility. I think the word “treaty” may have well been outlawed in this country, unless it is being sung by Tim Finn in a Yothu Yindi song, and even then we’ll pretend it has no political ramifications, just a kickin’ bassline and a white-hot organ sample.

The prospect of a republic also wanes – it will be an age before another leader tries that one.

Keating was moving us towards an engagement in our own region that made sense. He saw the possibilities for Australia as an independent nation which under Howard’s watch has merely shifted from being UK reliant to being US reliant.


Without Keating there would have been no Triple J – and the fact that we had to rely on Howard’s kids to talk him out of axing JJJ (I’m sure being kicked to death by teenage contemporaries is a good motivator) tells you all you need to know about the differences in the two men. And in case you’re wondering, I’m not arguing that Keating was cooler than Howard. In fact I’m arguing that Keating was cooler, smarter, more progressive, more uniting and generally better*.

I don’t wish Keating back on the political stage. But I do wish he had been given the chance to enact his agenda, which despite what his detractors may have you believe, was aimed at uniting the country despite the political fall-out, not polarising communities using hate and fear to ensure a longer term of office.


* There are those who would argue that winning the 1996 election makes Howard “smarter”. But the same people will tell you that Jeff Kennett is “smarter” than Steve Bracks, which if it were true would make the first a lie. I’m willing to give you one, but not both. If you want my respect for your reasoned argument, you’re going to need some consistency.