James Curran, Grand Ambition: Paul Keating's Global Vision for Australia

 

 

- James Curran, a Professor of Modern History at the University of Sydney, has written a detailed and utterly absorbing story of Paul Keating's time as Treasurer and Prime Minister of Australia in the 1980's and 90's. 

- I can do no better than quote in full the summary on the inside flap:

'Written with never-before-seen documents from Paul Keating's archive and drawing on many years of conversations, this book explores the ambitions for Australia that guided Keating: arguably the last prime minister with a compelling long-term vision for the country.

As Australia stands on the edge of the greatest reappraisal of its strategic circumstances, what is the relevance of Paul Keating's vision for Australia in the world today?

At the moment of his political defeat in 1996, Paul Keating stood defiant, still arguing for a vision of Australia that reached far beyond the limits of electoral politics. Three decades on, this book revisits that vision: bold, contested and somewhat unravelled by subsequent Coalition governments. It traces how Keating sought to reshape Australia's foreign policy at the end of the Cold War: anchoring the country in Asia, embedding China within a regional order, deepening ties with Indonesia and challenging long-held assumptions about dependence on great powers. For Keating, economic reform, national identity and international strategy were inseparable: part of a single, sweeping project to remake Australia.

Ambitious and provocative, this is both a portrait of a singular political mind and a reappraisal of a pivotal era. It argues that the questions Keating grappled with - about independence, security and identity - remain unresolved, and more urgent than ever in a world defined by rising tensions between the United States, China and the rest of the world.'  

- What I particularly enjoyed were Keating's thoughts on our current times. He tears AUKUS into shreds for example: '...the decision represented an appalling ignominy' that 'speaks volumes about our incapacity to absorb the region, enjoy the region, be part of the region and to celebrate the fact that we're here'. AUKUS 'was in effect a resuscitation of the Cold War policy of 'forward defence', the stance adopted by successive Coalition governments in the 1950s and 1960s and designed to keep Asian communism as far as possible from Australia's shores. AUKUS fused and made permanent the idea that China should be regarded primarily as a threat, and that Australia should rely on its traditional 'great and powerful friends'; a triumph of the Anglosphere...'  

- He also bluntly repudiates the idea that Australia should aid the defence of Taiwan. Taiwan is 'not a vital Australian interest'. 

- So Curran has written a superb book. It's a must read.