No wonder they despise Keating

We all learned to despise Keating in the eighties and early nineties. But the conservatives, including Howard, seemed intent not just on destroying the person, or the access to power, but also to grind his memory into the dust. It always seemed excessive to me, but I didn’t understand why.

But Keating has recently reappeared a little on the scene. He spoke ardently and combatively the other day about IR changes. And today I came across a quote from 2003 which reminded me just how powerful was his rhetoric. Listen to this and gasp. No wonder the right needs to annihilate this man.

“Former Prime Minister Paul Keating suggests that, in the future, all that will remain of the conservative, mean-spirited haters of our present will be ‘a smudge in history’:

‘They absolutely insist of their view and the lessons they see in our history. Yet in their insistence, their proprietorialness, their derivativeness and their rancour, they reduce the flame and energy within the nation to a smouldering incandescence. What they do is crimp and cripple our destiny. It’s like suffering from some sort of anaemia; robbing the political blood of its energy.’

Keating believes, however, that ‘the undertaking is simply too big for them’. Despite their insistence, ‘[n]o great transformation can come from their tiny view of (Australians) and their limited faith in us’.”

Whew!

Paul Keating’s quotes are from his speech at the launch of Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark’s The History Wars, 3 Sept 2003). This whole quote is from "Making the future: Activism memory and hope" by Sean Scalmer & Sarah Maddison. In Overland 173, Summer 2003, pp. 34-35.

Another quote from earlier in this article also hit me. It's about this government's method of silencing dissent. If you follow the news, you will know of other such instances (HR&EOC, government contracts with religious groups and youth representation come immediately to mind)

“Mick Dodson has sniffed defeat in the battle for Indigenous rights. The Howard Government has been vicious:

‘If you dissent you get punished. That’s what they do, they just take your money away if you’re dependent on it. They are very vindictive people who are full of hate, and anyone who wants to try to stand up to their ideology or their philosophy is silenced’.”

Ibid, p. 31