75 Facts About Paul Keating

Paul John Keating was born on 18 January 1944 and is an Australian former politician and trade unionist who served as the 24th prime minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996, holding office as the leader of the Australian Labor Party.

Paul Keating previously served as the treasurer of Australia in the Hawke government from 1983 to 1991 and as the 7th deputy prime minister of Australia from 1990 to 1991.

Paul Keating joined the Labor Party at the same age, serving a term as State President of Young Labor and working as a research assistant for a trade union.

Paul Keating was elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the age of 25, winning the division of Blaxland at the 1969 election.

Paul Keating briefly was Minister for Northern Australia from October to November 1975, in the final weeks of the Whitlam government.

Paul Keating became recognised for his sardonic rhetoric, as a controversial but deeply skilled orator.

Paul Keating became deputy prime minister in 1990, but in June 1991 he resigned from the Government to unsuccessfully challenge Hawke for the leadership, believing he had reneged on the Kirribilli Agreement.

Paul Keating mounted a second successful challenge six months later, and became prime minister.

Paul Keating was appointed prime minister in the aftermath of the early 1990s economic downturn, which he had famously described as "the recession we had to have".

This, combined with poor opinion polling, led many to predict Labor was certain to lose the 1993 election, but Paul Keating's government was re-elected in an upset victory.

Paul Keating resigned as leader of the Labor Party and retired from Parliament shortly after the election, with his deputy Kim Beazley being elected unopposed to replace him.

Paul Keating has since remained active as a political commentator, whilst maintaining a broad series of business interests, including serving on the international board of the China Development Bank from 2005 to 2018.

Since leaving office, Paul Keating received broad praise from historians and commentators for his role in modernising the Australian economy as treasurer, although ratings of his premiership have been mixed.

Paul Keating has been recognised across the political spectrum for his charisma, debating skills, and his willingness to boldly confront social norms, including his famous Redfern Park Speech on the impact of colonisation in Australia and Aboriginal reconciliation.

Paul Keating was born at St Margaret's Hospital in Darlinghurst, Sydney, on 18 January 1944.

Paul Keating was the first of four children born to Minnie and Matthew John Keating.

Paul Keating's father worked as a boilermaker for the New South Wales Government Railways.

Paul Keating grew up in Bankstown, a working-class suburb in western Sydney, with the family home from 1942 to 1966 being a modest fibro and brick bungalow at 3 Marshall Street, Bankstown.

Paul Keating's siblings include Anne Keating, a company director and businesswoman.

Paul Keating attended Belmore Technical High School to further his education.

Paul Keating then worked as research assistant for a trade union, having joined the Labor Party as soon as he was eligible.

Paul Keating developed a friendship with former New South Wales Premier Jack Lang, who Keating took on as a political mentor.

Paul Keating successfully gained the Labor nomination for the seat of Blaxland in the western suburbs of Sydney, and was elected to the House of Representatives in 1969 when he was just 25 years old.

Paul Keating later voted against former prime minister John Gorton's motion to decriminalise homosexuality in 1973.

Paul Keating was eventually appointed Minister for Northern Australia in October 1975, but served in the role only until the Government was controversially dismissed by Governor-General John Kerr the following month.

However, by 1982, the members of his faction had swung behind Hawke, and Paul Keating endorsed his challenge.

Hawke's enthusiasms were cigars, betting and most forms of sport; Paul Keating preferred classical architecture, Mahler symphonies and collecting British Regency and French Empire antiques.

Paul Keating used the authority and relative autonomy provided to him by Hawke to become one of the major driving forces behind the various extensive macroeconomic reforms of the Government.

In December 1983, Hawke and Paul Keating approved the floating of the Australian dollar, disregarding advice from the Treasury Secretary John Stone to retain the fixed currency framework.

The success of the move, which was lauded by economic and media commentators, gave confidence to Paul Keating to pursue even more reforms.

Paul Keating was instrumental in establishing the Hawke government's signature industrial relations and wages policy, the Prices and Incomes Accord.

Paul Keating therefore decided to abandon any plans for a consumption tax, although the remainder of the reforms were adopted in the tax reform package.

Whilst the remainder of the package represented the biggest overhaul of the Australian taxation system for decades, Paul Keating continued to agitate for further changes to address the balance of payments problems faced by Australia.

On 14 May 1986, frustrated at the slow pace of dealing with the issue, Paul Keating caused considerable public comment and a degree of controversy when he declared on a radio programme that if Australia did not address the problem, it risked degenerating to the status of a "banana republic".

In private, Paul Keating had argued for rates to rise earlier than they did, and fall sooner, although his view was at odds with the Reserve Bank and his Treasury colleagues.

However, by the end of 1990, frustrated at the lack of any indication from Hawke as to when he might retire, Paul Keating delivered a provocative speech questioning the direction of the government.

Hawke won the ballot by 66 votes to 44, and in a press statement afterwards Paul Keating declared that he had fired his "one shot" as regards the leadership.

Paul Keating paid tribute to Hawke's nine years as prime minister, and stated that he would provide a robust challenge to Hewson.

On 20 December 1991, Paul Keating was sworn in as prime minister by the Governor-General Bill Hayden.

On becoming prime minister, Paul Keating thought of becoming treasurer again, noting that state premiers had often been their own treasurers, but decided against it.

Paul Keating entered office with an extensive legislative agenda, including pursuing reconciliation with Australia's Indigenous population, deepening Australia's economic and cultural ties with Asia, and making Australia a republic.

Shortly after Paul Keating became prime minister, the High Court of Australia handed down a judgment in a long-running case on Indigenous land rights; the judgement would come to be known as Mabo, and declared that a right to native title did exist in Australia, overturning terra nullius, but not clarifying exactly who had the right to access the title.

Paul Keating led the Government's response to the ruling, beginning a high-profile public campaign on raising awareness of the issue, and advocating repeatedly in favour of the judgment and for an expansion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land rights.

On 10 December 1992, Paul Keating delivered a major address which came to be known as the Redfern Park Speech on Aboriginal reconciliation, a speech which has since regularly been cited as among the greatest in Australian political history, in which he explicitly noted the responsibility of settler Australians for destroying much of Indigenous society.

Elsewhere in domestic policy, Paul Keating established and promoted the first Commonwealth cultural policy, known as 'Creative Nation'.

Paul Keating had frequently espoused the benefits of the arts in public, and used the policy as an opportunity to develop the Australian cultural sector.

Arguably Paul Keating's most far-reaching achievement as prime minister was the full introduction of the National Superannuation Scheme, implemented to address Australia's long-term problem of chronically low national savings.

Paul Keating's solution was a "three pillars" approach to retirement income, requiring compulsory employer contributions to superannuation funds, permitting further contributions to superannuation funds and other investments, and introducing, where this was insufficient, a safety net consisting of a means-tested government-funded age pension.

Paul Keating made a conscious effort to develop a personal relationship with Indonesian President Suharto, and to include Indonesia in multilateral forums attended by Australia.

In December 1993, Paul Keating became involved in a diplomatic incident with Malaysia when he described Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad as "recalcitrant".

Some Malaysian officials talked of launching a "Buy Australian Last" campaign; Paul Keating subsequently apologised to Mahathir over the remark.

Paul Keating was helped by Hewson struggling towards the end of the campaign to explain exactly which products would have the GST levied on them, and which would not.

The speech Paul Keating delivered at the victory celebration has been described as one of the great Labor speeches.

Paul Keating routinely succeeded in outwitting Downer within Parliament, and in early 1995, Downer resigned to be replaced by John Howard, who had previously led the Liberals from 1985 to 1989.

Paul Keating accepted appointment as a director for various companies, and became a senior adviser to Lazard, an investment banking firm.

Paul Keating was appointed to the advisory council to the Chinese Government Development Bank.

Paul Keating was appointed a visiting professor of public policy at the University of New South Wales and was awarded honorary doctorates in law from Keio University in Tokyo, the National University of Singapore, the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University.

In 1997, Paul Keating declined appointment in the Australia Day Honours as a Companion of the Order of Australia, an honour which has been offered to all former prime ministers since the modern Australian Honours System was introduced in 1975.

On his refusal, Paul Keating expressed that he had long believed honours should be reserved for those whose work in the community went unrecognised and that having been prime minister was sufficient public recognition.

The book first drew criticism from Paul Keating's by then-estranged wife, Annita Paul Keating, who said that it understated her contribution, a complaint Watson rejected.

Paul Keating himself was so unhappy with the book that it brought the two men's friendship to an abrupt end.

Paul Keating initially avoided public political comment during the Howard government, although made occasional speeches criticising his successor's social policies.

Paul Keating described Howard's deputy, Peter Costello, as being "all tip and no iceberg" when referring to an alleged pact made by Howard to hand the leadership over to Costello after two terms.

In February 2008, after Labor's victory in the 2007 election, Paul Keating joined former prime ministers Whitlam, Fraser and Hawke in Parliament House to witness new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd deliver the National Apology to the Stolen Generations.

In 2013, Paul Keating took part in a series of four-hour-long interviews with Kerry O'Brien which were broadcast on the ABC in November of that year.

Paul Keating repeatedly declared he would not write a memoir, so his cooperation with O'Brien was perceived as the closest he would come to producing an autobiography.

In 2019, during campaigning for that year's federal election, Paul Keating spoke out against the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation by calling them "nutters".

Paul Keating's remarks attracted media criticism, and Labor Leader Bill Shorten distanced himself from Keating's views.

Paul Keating later issued a joint statement with Bob Hawke endorsing Labor's economic plan as part of the election campaign, and condemning the Liberal Party for "completely [giving] up the economic reform agenda".

In September 2021, following the announcement of the AUKUS trilateral military alliance between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia, Paul Keating criticised the alliance, saying that "Australia turns its back on the 21st century, the century of Asia, for the jaded and faded Anglosphere" and the deal would be "locking the country and its military forces into the force structure of the United States by acquiring US submarines".

Paul Keating's comments were criticised by Labor MPs Anthony Byrne and Peter Khalil.

In 1976, Paul Keating married Annita van Iersel, a Dutch-born flight attendant for Alitalia.

Since 1998, Paul Keating's partner has been the actress Julieanne Newbould.

Paul Keating's daughter, Katherine Paul Keating, is a former adviser to former New South Wales Minister Craig Knowles as well as former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.

Paul Keating's interests include the music of Gustav Mahler and collecting French antique clocks.