As susceptible as I can be to Paul Keating’s rhetorical powers, I nevertheless get a queasy feeling when he pops up — again and again, driving Australian progressives and political junkies into a frenzy.
Given Keating was such a pioneer and champion of neoliberalism in Australia — effectively stripping power and money away from workers and poor Australians — it’s staggering, and certainly embarrassing, to see how progressives can carry on about him.
Every time PJK graces our screens — to talk economics, or dunk on the LNP — social media erupts in a fever dream of admiration and nostalgia, with people reciting their favourite Keating zingers, and complaining that our current lot of bloodless leaders don’t have his oratorical grandeur.
Twenty-three years after he lost the leadership, there remains a steady barrage of glowing editorial pieces pining for the return of a Keating-like figure to descend from the heavens and “salvage” progressive politics.
Given the toxicity of our current conservative government — and the lack of meaningful resistance from Labor — this nostalgia for some mythic, idealised past makes sense: as progressives, we can temporarily escape our wretched political moment and remember a time when our Labor politicians had swagger, and our unions had real power.
Of course, the problem with nostalgia is it seriously distorts our perception of history. Keating nostalgia has progressives pining for a leader who deregulated the labour market, spearheaded privatisation, and started dismantling our social security system. More perversely, Keating nostalgia has progressives overlooking the harm he unnecessarily inflicted on Australia’s poor and unemployed workers.
Many of Labor’s often-lauded economic initiatives in the ’80s and ’90s were funded by stripping people’s social security entitlements, or kicking people off welfare rolls altogether. Under Keating, the level of the unemployment benefit significantly decreased — falling by 16% between 1991 and 1996 — and causing a devastating increase in youth homelessness.
Keating also ramped up the government’s surveillance and policing of poor Australians. He adopted the nasty, neoliberal assumption that the unemployed were lazy, individually responsible for their own poverty, and required discipline and punishment from the services previously designed to help them. As a result, by Keating’s last year in office, the number of penalties imposed on unemployed workers by employment services had reached a then-record 75,000.
Inside accounts claim that Keating cared remarkably little about the suffering of poor Australians; in fact, it’s been said he was regularly reminded by staffers to display some sensitivity to the plight of the unemployed. According to John Edwards’ 1996 biography, before a debate in the 1993 electoral campaign:
… as usual, Keating was urged to say he was distressed by unemployment. ‘Cheap sentiment’, he said, ‘is the villain of public life.’
Yet, in full public view, Keating always seemed to know exactly what to say and how to say it. His assaults on workers’ rights and social security were always glossed over by a veneer of charisma and pomp — aided by a media class who were (and remain) enthralled and stupefied by his cunning rhetoric.
Peter Hartcher called Keating’s style of speaking a “siren-song… so beguiling that, like Ulysses’ seamen, [journalists] deliberately close their ears”. Even though his speeches were often riddled with unintelligible jargon, impressionable journos ecstatically pumped out articles about how his fiery performances turned dreary economics into a popular art.
Yet, far more disturbing than all the press hysteria, is the love and devotion our politicians still carry for Keating’s bloated brand of corporate, free-market Laborism.
Chris Bowen — likely our next treasurer — idolises PJK and talks to him on the phone “several times a week”. Last month, Bowen announced that Labor is pursuing a “refreshed, updated, renewed” version of Keating-era neoliberalism. Like most reboots and remakes, this promises to be even more tiresome and needless than the original release.
Although Saint Paul himself recently declared neoliberalism is at a “dead end”, modern Labor is still offering no meaningful pathway out of the economic wreckage. While the LNP is deeply committed to worsening economic inequality, Labor is barely committed to doing anything to address it.
Newstart hasn’t been raised in real terms since Keating’s second year as PM — and still, Bill Shorten is refusing to commit to an immediate raise. Last year, unemployed workers copped an incredible 1.6 million penalties, cutting off their income support; yet, Labor has no plans to remove compliance-based punishments of the poor.
Sadly, an incoming Labor government offers no meaningful alternative to the free-market neoliberalism that, since PJK’s heyday, has crushed workers and social security recipients.
As it stands, Labor and its supporters still seem too afraid to hope for anything better than a backwards-looking zombie Keatingism.
What do you make of the ongoing idolisation of Paul Keating? Send your thoughts to boss@crikey.com.au.
This comment is on the nail. Indeed, it is time for progressives to realise that Paul Keating was a neoliberal all the way, and that was why the Howard led opposition went along with so much of his economic reform legislation – they could not believe he was doing it for them!
Of course, most of his reforms were sensible and beneficial in the long term.
Ray Bricknell.
Wrong, Bricky. The reforms created financial instability and consistently poorer performance than we had in the 50s and 60s, now approaching anemia. The 70s were grossly misrepresented by the neolibs.
http://betternaturebooks.net.au/index.php/2018/11/26/myth-robust-economy/
I tell what is nonsense, thinking we can stand alone or in special deals without repercussion.
Neoliberalism is probably the worst single thing tht has happened to both the Australian and world economies. How a bunch of otherwise smart and clever people could have been conned for so long remains a mystery to me. The only plausable explanation is that those arguing in favour of neolibralism somehow felt or assumed that they would be among those at the top of the heap who would benefit.
When I say that NL is bad for the world economy, I’m pointing to the continuing “race to the bottom” to see which country can tax multi-national corporations the least. This has created a situaton where these corporations, often with incomes greater than the median GDP, contribute virtually zero to the countries in which they operate. How this can be good for anyone is beyond me.
And, thankfully, Paul is now saying that they got it wrong. It’s too bad that it is too late to “unscramble the egg”
Don – “Democracy in Chains” by Nancy MacLean will answer a lot of your questions, including why and where it all started, and how it became mainstream. James McGill Buchanan is one of the principal villains – his Wikipedia entry provides a useful intro as does an article in him on 15 Aug 2017 in The Atlantic, which you can find on google.
Michael Pusey’s Economic Rationalism in Canberra: A Nation-Building State Changes Its Mind is also a good starting point
One start to unscrambling the egg would be to raise taxes for the wealthy, similar to what more progressive Dems in the US are arguing for.
I have no idea how we’re going to get lower price housing without doing a lot of damage to current high mortgage payers, but down it must come somehow.
I like the idea of substantially increasing taxes on land and resources (including virtual resources) instead of income and company taxes. My understanding is that land/resources taxes are more “efficient” (i.e. less market distorting) than income/company taxes, harder to circumvent, and are easier to make the case for philosophically as you can argue that land and resources are essentially part of the commons. Also, I expect, although I don’t have much idea of the numbers, that the additional tax burden would proportionally fall upon super-rich rent-seekers rather than entrepreneurs.
Thanks for that Jeremy. Keating is the primary author of most things wrong with Australia at the moment. Yes the other lot are worse, but Keating started it and did most of the ‘heavy lifting’. Then John Howard took us fully to the Dark Side.
See The Rise and Failure of the Radical Right http://betternaturebooks.net.au/index.php/my-books/radical-right/
or, at greater length, Desperately Seeking the Fair Go,
http://betternaturebooks.net.au/index.php/my-books/fair-go/
Like nearly all impressive people in history Keating was/is clearly not without flaws, effective visionaries with the ability to execute as well as pontificate often have a streak of “whatever it takes” ruthlessness and Keating is no exception. The reality is that Australia was in dire need of serious economic reform and that no worker or business in Australia was going to do well until it was fixed, and Keating delivered in spades, the following years of economic growth which were the envy of the world and the gift to Howard and Costello were all Keating’s making. What Australians want on balance is a centrist view of the world that enables economic success while providing a progressive safety net. They are not fans of either radical socialism or radical free market capitalism. Trickle down economics have been as soundly debunked as a real world concept as communism has been. What Keating offered was real reform, clear policy direction and the ability to clearly spell it out and defend it, love it or hate it. That has been missing for some time, there has been little vision, clarity, reform or progress since Keating. During that time The accord was criticized by both the left and the right, which probably means it got a lot right, while it did restrict wages growth the trade off in keeping inflation under control and funding many important social reforms such as Medicare, rental assistance, family income supplements meant that the value of the wages were well supported by social programs. So yes some fair points, yes some things to be critical of, saint Keating is not a saint at all, but all of us, workers and business are better off than we would have been without the Keating era reforms.
Don’t forget Keating and Kelty brought in universal super, for which I thank Keating daily in my comfortable retirement. All good things for the mob have come from the Labor party and the unions. The conservative meanies can all fuck off.
I’ll give him that, for the same reason as you, though I railed against it at the time.
The rest of the HawKeating agenda was pretty crap, it was the Rodent’s wet dream that they did what he wanted and thus could continue the rapine afterwards and say, “They started it!” truthfully – probably the only honest thing he ever said.
Can we have a follow up detailing alternatives?
Try this Federali
http://betternaturebooks.net.au/index.php/better-oz/progressive-policies/some-first-step-policies/
Agreed
oops, wrong spot; never mind…