Peter Botsman

“I said a lot of very positive things about Keating that weren’t in there,” Peter Botsman told Crikey.

“I think that Keating is a much better PM than Hawke,” who told Crikey
that he considered Keating Australia’s third greatest Prime Minister
after Chiffley and Curtin. “I am a Keating true believer.”

“I don’t feel hard done by at all… I’ve got a lot of respect for John
Lyons and I don’t think he was maleavolant… I think it was a
legitimate attempt.”

“Until people like Don Russel write his version of history then there
is no point in speculation about Keating’s time as Prime Minister”

He said the Keating story was still very incomplete, and was slightly
critical that Lyons didn’t get anyone from Keating’s inner circle to
speak on the record because admirers like himself, friend Phillip Adams
and Leo Schofield were probably not the closest people to Keating
during his time as PM.

“I was never one of the inner circle.”

“I think if that puts a hot rod under Keating’s bum (to write his own account), then it’s a worthwhile piece.”

Philip Adams
“I spoke to him only to see what line he was running”

“Lyons had a job to do and he went out to get the facts to support it.”
And although most journalists do this before they write, said Adams,
it’s not usually as blantant and uncompromising as the Lyons piece.

“I felt I was having a struggle to get Lyons to realise there was more to Keating than he made out.”

Adams said that he did not feel as though he was taken out of context,
he essentially understood when he spoke to Lyons what the final piece
would look like. “A lot of things I said were not in there.”

“The real and all pervading line that starts in Watson and continues in Lyons is this sad, defeated and dejected man”

“Why does Packer do it? Christ only knows,” said Adams. “The story isn’t Keating, it’s Packer.”