Paul Keating, telling it like it should have been: Asiamoney, July 2000

Asiamoney, July/August  2000

 Paul Keating, former treasurer and prime minister, is the Australian leader most strongly associated with a push to integrate the country with Asia. He shares his views on Apec, Indonesia and the republic debate with Chris Wright.

 You have argued consistently for greater engagement by Australia with the Asia Pacific region, politically and economically. Where do you think Australia now stands in that regard?

There is a template for Australian policy in Asia. The present government isn’t as committed as the government I led to engagement of the kind I believe in. But the fact that the template is there will mean that Australia’s engagement with Asia is simply a matter of inevitability.

 What do you think the present government’s initiatives to put Australia in a more global context financially have achieved?

Not much. Australia has a role in the region in economic terms, and things like revolving balance of payments facilities are relevant. Facilitation of the kind that Hockey and others are involved in is fine. But given that these markets have now been open for two decades, the financial markets are such that they are going to do their own work.

 You were closely involved in the development of Apec. When you look at it now, how does it compare with what you thought it could be at the time of the Bogor declaration in 1994?

Well the most important thing about Apec is that it actually exists. That in the Asia Pacific there is a grouping of political lobbies which includes the president of the United States. He only puts his knees under two tables outside his own office: G7 and Apec. So when he has an annual meeting with the leaders of China, Japan and Indonesia, it matters a greater deal.

The Bogor declaration is still the most ambitious, far-reaching trade declaration of its kind. It’s not really a question of whether this trade initiative got a heavy tick or that one didn’t, it’s a matter of whether the Bogor declaration, in its essence, is making the region more open and integrated, and whether sitting atop this body is the most powerful regional grouping in the world.

 How much credit do you think you deserve for making Apec what it became?

What, a leaders meeting? I first put the idea to George Bush on New Year’s Day 1992, and before that nobody was even talking about it. Everybody thought it was impossible. There was nobody supporting the idea. I think a mighty step was taken [in the first Apec meeting, Seattle in 1993] and I don’t honestly think we would even be thinking about China’s accession to the WTO without it.

 Indonesia is the place on which you spent most time in terms of Australian foreign policy. You worked closely with Suharto, probably closer than any other leader of a developed world country. What’s your assessment of him now?

My assessment of him is that he was the leader that took Indonesia from abject poverty to the state it is in today. But he was also a man who suffered from his own success.

The slogan of the new order government was economics first, politics later. That slogan delayed the day when the Indonesian population got the right and the opportunity to have more expression in their politics. In the end the aspirations of the burgeoning middle class overwhelmed the structure of the new order, and Suharto went as a consequence.

Public opinion in Indonesia these days is that he presided over a period of corruption and cronyism.

That’s a matter for Indonesians. I can just make these points to you. That my relationship with Suharto was as a relationship between Australia and Indonesia. He was the president and head of state of that country when I was about. Without him there would have been no Apec. No Bogor declaration. Because without him, and south-east Asia, the Chinese would not have been in the Apec structure, and without them the Japanese would not have been there. He was central to that, and at the Bogor meeting he managed the meeting with consummate skill. And from Australia’s point of view he always had a very benign view of Australia.

 It has been said that Australia’s relationship with Indonesia can never be the same again following the deployment of Australian troops in East Timor.

I think it can be the same again. But not with the present Australian government. The present Australian government has been marked down significantly in Indonesia and frankly I think it is going to stay marked down. If Kim Beazley forms a government in Australia he will do all the things necessary to rebalance the relationship.

Does rebalancing the relationship involve Australia taking a stance towards Indonesia which ignores human rights issues?

Australia has never ignored human rights issues. All that happened was [Indonesia] had an interim president who embarked on a policy that he couldn’t manage. Under Suharto or under Wahid we would have had a far more certain path of adoption for dealing with Timor. As it was, inviting the United Nations to have a vote there, telling people they had the security to choose whether or not they wanted to be independent when in fact they didn’t, was a consequence of that change of government. Australia doesn’t have to compromise any of its core values of democracy or liberty, but it does have to understand the problems of Indonesia, and the importance of holding the archipelago together. It is not as if we are dealing here with a country that doesn’t have values in these things.

You are the man who floated the Australian dollar. How much does it matter that the dollar is at such a low level, at least against the US dollar?

I think what really matters is the strength of the United States dollar – against the Australian dollar, against the euro, against just about everything else. Australia has been enjoying, and no doubt is still enjoying, a competitive fillip from its exchange rate. One of the strengths of Australia in recent years is that the central bank here has not tried to defend a rate, but let the exchange rate take the slack and make monetary policy more accommodating to growth.

When do you expect to see Australia as a republic?

Well it needed to be yesterday. Borrowing the monarch of another country doesn’t induce much confidence in others. But more than that, it says a lot of bad things to ourselves about ourselves. The republic is psychologically important to Australia. We shouldn’t have a union jack in the corner of our flag. We are the only nation on earth with a continent to ourselves, in a temperate part of the world, adjacent to the fastest growing part of the world. We have got to do everything in our power to take advantage of that, and that starts with being ourselves. And we can’t really be ourselves when not any one of us can be a head of state.

Why do you think the referendum failed?

Because the wrong question was asked. If people were asked: do you think Australia should be a republic or a constitutional monarchy, the answer would have been, overwhelmingly, a republic. The republican vote was divided between those who believed in an elected presidency and a non-elected presidency. That was partly because prime minister Howard put the question in a way that he thought would guarantee the defeat of the proposal. I think Australian history in the end will run over the top of him.

And to return to the question, when?

When a Labor government comes back in to this country you will see it back on the agenda far more quickly than expected.

Does it have to be a Labor government? Or just a government without John Howard heading it?

You’ve got to believe in it. It has to be believed in. And in the end the liberal government fundamentally does not believe in it.

Looking back do you feel you did enough in your time in office to try to bring about a republic?

Well I was the only prime minister to ever take it up as an official policy. I took the risk at a national election of making it part of a manifesto, a policy speech, and then set up the appropriate mechanisms, a committee, to look at the issues. Then I brought to parliament a proposal, a schematic, for the movement to a republic, and then proposed that at the ensuing election we would then ask the question: do you want a republic or a monarchy? Of course, I didn’t win that election [1996]. Had I won it, I believe that question would have been answered in the affirmative, and we would have been able then to successfully pursue the republican option.

And it would be all over by now?

It would be all over, red rover.

Editor’s note: this is an abridged version of the interview. The full version can be accessed by Asiamoney subscribers at http://www.asiamoney.com/Article/2057560/Search/Results/AustraliaTelling-it-like-it-could-have-been.html?Keywords=Paul+Keating&OrderType=1