Last night Paul Keating appeared on the 7.30 Report with reporter Leigh Sales to discuss the possible impact of the Trump presidency on Australia.
In classic Keating simplicity and vision he explained that we should not get around like Uriah Heep, the fictional Charles Dickens character, defined as “notable for his cloying humility, obsequious and insincerity, whose name has become synonymous with being a sycophant”.
Here is an edited transcript. Why can’t our current politicians be so clear?
LEIGH SALES: With the election of Donald Trump, can Australia continue to depend on the United States alliance, the way that it has?
PAUL KEATING: Well, I think, this whole question about our subordination to the United States in a sort of broad policy terms, this society of ours is a better society than the United States, than the society of the United States.
I mean, it’s more even, it’s more fair, we’ve had a 50 per cent increase in real incomes in the last 20 years, median America has had zero, zero.
We’ve had universal health protection – from the cradle to the grave.
We have a retirement income system, with superannuation.
We have high participation rates in schools. We don’t shoot our children in schools and if they were to be shot, we’d take the guns off the people who shot them. The Americans do not do this.
This is a better society than the United States. Therefore the idea we should get around like Uriah Heep like we’re some subordinate outfit that has to get a signal from abroad before we think, is of course a complete denial of everything we’ve created here.
We should be thinking the same way in foreign policy terms and in foreign policy terms, we’re getting the message from President-Elect Donald Trump that he’s a big power guy and he’s not for alliances, like, wink, wink, you may be on your own.
LEIGH SALES: So how do we respond to that?
PAUL KEATING: Like grown-ups, like we should have always responded all the years through.
We’ve got into this almost sort of crazy position now where the American alliance, instead of simply being a treaty, where the United States is on obliged to consult with us in the event of adverse strategic circumstances, it has now taken on a reverential, sacramental quality. It’s like a sacrament.
I mean what we have to do is make our way in Asia ourselves with an independent foreign policy.
…our future is basically in the region around us, is in South-East Asia and what we should be thinking about is an independent policy which does worry about Indonesia, that does worry about South-East Asia.
I mean isn’t an independent, balanced foreign policy the right answer? Or do we stay in a crouch, saying Hail Marys to the alliance?
LEIGH SALES: I would guess the current government and probably the Labor leadership would say we do operate an independent foreign policy.
PAUL KEATING: We don’t. The foreign policy of Australia is basically, we have tag along rights to the US and we conduct our foreign policy, certainly since I left public office in the Howard years, with Iraq, you know, and in the years since, we’ve had more or less a tag-along foreign policy, tagging along to the United States.
It’s time to cut the tag. Time to get out of it.
LEIGH SALES: You said that Donald Trump is a strong man. If you were Prime Minister, how would you actually deal with him?
PAUL KEATING: Well, I like strong guys, you know. Great. You know, I mean, he said some interesting things.
Look, I wouldn’t have voted for him at the election, I would have voted for Hillary. But he said some interesting things.
So Trump says can’t we have a better relationship with Russia? Not a bad idea. Then he says instead of the pivot to squeeze China down, he says can’t we get along better with China? Can’t we come to a better relationship with China? Not a bad idea.
There’s two reasonable ideas there. So there is some prospect that America is going to become more America-centric and less the template of 1947, the post-war multilateral template of the post-war years from 1947, essentially would change, I believe, under President Trump, to a much more US-centric foreign policy and much more US-centric focus.
Not to the exclusion of alliances but he’s making it pretty clear the Japanese pay for themselves, the Koreans pay for themselves. He says they can either have their own nuclear weapons, God forbid. So, do we listen to these messages or do we pretend that they haven’t happened and we go back to the prayer well of the sacrament of the alliance?
Footnote: John Howard also appeared on the program but had little to say apart from watch this space.
Watch the full interview here.
