PAUL KEATING INTERVIEW - Wednesday, 5th September, 2007
GEORGE NEGUS: Mr Keating, can we clean up an APEC conundrum
that has
been bugging me? I mean, who actually was the architect of APEC?
Because depending on who you read, Bob Hawke pinched it from Gareth
Evans, Gareth Evans pinched it from public servants. I mean, are you
really the rolled gold architect?
PAUL KEATING, FORMER PRIME MINISTER: I am the rolled gold
architect of
the APEC leaders meeting. Bob is the rolled gold architect of APEC, the
economic meeting.
GEORGE NEGUS: So I guess we can say this is all your fault
then, those
people who think the APEC thing is a bit of a farce?
PAUL KEATING: This part of it is, yeah.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can we talk about some APEC housekeeping. You
have been
pretty rugged on Sydneysiders who have been moaning and complaining
about the inconvenience, you told them to grow up. Were you serious or
was that a Keatingism?
PAUL KEATING: No, of course I'm serious. I mean, you know,
you've been
around public life long enough, George, to know the might of the world
is here, the United States President, the Chinese President, the
Japanese Prime Minister, the Indonesian President. We say, "No, please
don't put us out to have your discussions." I mean, give us a break.
GEORGE NEGUS: But is all this security really necessary? I
mean, I
spoke to Shimon Peres last year and he said he doesn't build fences and
walls, he builds bridges.
PAUL KEATING: Yeah, I belong to that school. I never had a lot
of
security when I was Prime Minister. But things have changed and I can't
really make a judgement about that.
GEORGE NEGUS: So you do think it's probably necessary?
PAUL KEATING: It is probably necessary.
GEORGE NEGUS: "The rabble-proof fence" it was described as by
some
card, I mean, how do you feel about the people who feel obliged to
protest?
PAUL KEATING: But I'm not sure what they are protesting about.
You
know, what are they saying, that freer trade and more trade in the
world hasn't lifted a billion Chinese out of poverty? Because it has.
Is it not lifting people, I mean, 400 million people, I think, is the
number of people that have been lifted out of poverty in Asia in the
last decade. I mean, economic growth works. And this may not suit some
people and they are saying that it's usury and we are using..
GEORGE NEGUS: There is an area of agreement between you and
John Howard
because that's his line.
PAUL KEATING: Yeah, well I agree with that line.
GEORGE NEGUS: You wouldn't deny them the right to protest,
though?
PAUL KEATING: Oh, no, no. They can go for their life as far as
I'm
concerned, George. I've been a bit of a protester myself of sorts, for
years.
GEORGE NEGUS: You have, you're an aging radical as we speak.
Can I put
it to you this way, reading what you've said over the last few weeks,
leading up to APEC, and now it's on, as you see it, they seem to have
lost the plot. As you put it, "a bunch of turkeys who aren't prepared
to take on the big issues."
PAUL KEATING: I don't think incrementalism in trade policy,
APEC, the
leaders meeting was not designed for that. You get the President of the
United States to sit at the table with his counterpart in China and
Japan, etc, and Russia, to resolve strategic issues. And there are big
ones to be resolved.
GEORGE NEGUS: But they would say that is what they are doing,
and that
is what they are going to do.
PAUL KEATING: But they're not, though. They are not. They are
just
doing the trade. They are doing the sort of.. Comparatively, they are
doing the knitting.
GEORGE NEGUS: As distinct from?
PAUL KEATING: From doing really big jobs, you know. So, OK,
yes, is
there a bit of a virtue in dropping further non-tariff barriers? Well,
of course there is. The most important thing about APEC, though, is
that it actually exists, that these leaders meet one another. You see,
take George W. Bush and Putin, they will see each other again. Hu
Jintao will see George Bush again. He will see his Japanese counterpart
again. And that just means you get to know a person better.
GEORGE NEGUS: One of the things that fascinates me about it is
that if
it was your idea, I've never heard John Howard go along with anything
that was your idea. Why has he gone along with APEC?
PAUL KEATING: Well, it is such a big I mean, he would never
have put
the APEC meeting. You can imagine him dealing with, You know, I told
the story today, when I was trying to get Li Peng, who was the Chinese
premier who presided over the Tiananmen Square massacre, into APEC, he
was the premier then, because he said, "Oh, we won't be in it. We won't
be there." I said, "You'll be there, you'll be there because you have
to be there. You are going to.. Let me get this right - you are going
to turn up the opportunity of meeting the American president regularly
and the Japanese prime minister you have never met regularly?" I said,
"You will be there." Anyway this was at dinner and so it got a bit
heated.
GEORGE NEGUS: Who was this upstart taking on the Chinese
Premier?
PAUL KEATING: And his wife tuned up and said, "Mr Keating,
please have
respect for my husband. He has recently had a heart attack." So I got
ticked off by the wife for knuckling Li Peng. But he turned up, you
see.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can ask you, you believe.. When you've been
quoted as
saying this I found this one of the most astounding things I have heard
from you for a while. "In my opinion, the most seriously dangerous part
of the world is not the Middle East, it is North Asia within the
triangle of unresolved tensions between China and Japan and the
northern peninsula." Now, when you said that, Alexander Downer said,
you are unsophisticated, you're playing politics, you're way off the
mark. And to suggest that these two countries are on the threshold of
going to war is just absurd. Were you suggesting that?
PAUL KEATING: No. You see, what he did was exaggerate what I
said and
then put it down. I mean, but, look, with Downer we've sent a boy on a
man's errand for years to try and deal with these countries. Of course
North Asia is the most dangerous part of the world. If you look at
Israel and the Palestinians, there is 4.5 million Israelis, there is
about 1 million Palestinians. There is 1.3 billion Chinese and there's,
you know, 160 million Japanese and 100 million Koreans, etc. It is
weight that causes problems. I mean, when the Nazis hopped into the
Russians, it was weight.
GEORGE NEGUS: They've got the numbers.
PAUL KEATING: And it is the weight of these great states,
China and
India and the antipathy between them, you know, the fact that the
Japanese have never atoned for their war atrocities in China and the
Chinese have never forgiven them.
GEORGE NEGUS: What are you saying we should be saying to them?
Can you
imagine John Howard and George Bush, or anybody else, any of the other
leaders who are here, sitting down and lecturing the Chinese leader,
the Japanese leader about how they ought to behave themselves in their
part of the world? I mean, this brings again whether APEC really,
really matters.
PAUL KEATING: But, George, you would be surprised how far you
can get
if you try, if you dare to try. How would I have gone, I mean, I
remember when I started the thing about the leader's meeting. We had
the little tut-tuts from foreign affairs here "Oh, very good, Prime
Minister, and of course, you know, ambitious but it will never happen."
You would be surprised how much the Chinese and the Japanese would take
notice of us, a middle power, now. But you have got to have your cards
up. You can't be playing a sort of 3-game, 3-card game between the
Americans ourselves and the Japanese with the Chinese not liking that.
And at the same time go to the Chinese and try to enjoin them to do
something good. Obviously you have to be the state that has good
intentions.
GEORGE NEGUS: Does it bother you that Kevin Rudd or I will put
it this
way, do you think you could be a little more equivocal about his
support for the US alliance? Because you can almost put, well this is
almost a Keatingism, almost put a cigarette paper between him and John
Howard on the Americans Alliance, except when it comes to the staged
withdrawal from Iraq. Is he kowtowing a bit?
PAUL KEATING: Well, I made the point the other day. I think
what an
Australian leader should be doing, I gave the organ analogy, you play
the keys in Asia and you pump the pedals in Washington. And that's what
a smart government does. You know, what a dumb government does is I
mean, the Americans do not want sycophants, they want helpers. They
want states that help them. They would love to understand this part of
the world better or, better, have us manage it for them. Instead of
that, what John Howard has done is thrown all his eggs into the
Washington basket and said " Me too. We are with you, we're with you."
GEORGE NEGUS: Are you confident that Kevin Rudd will be
different?
PAUL KEATING: Oh I think he'll be different because Kevin
understands
the East Asian hemisphere better than John Howard does, and he is not
inclined to compromise Australian national interest simply to serve the
interests of Washington.
GEORGE NEGUS: Can I ask you a question? I don't think you've
ever had
to answer this question. What you feel about Australia and Iraq and the
withdrawal from there.
PAUL KEATING: Well, we made a terrible mess of the country,
400 Iraqis
died the week before last. If I was John Howard, I would hang my head
in shame about all that. But we've made a terrible mess of the place.
And there is a kind of moral issue about whether we remain a helper in
the Iraq outcome. It's very hard to escape that point.
GEORGE NEGUS: Should Iraq be discussed at APEC?
PAUL KEATING: I don't think so because it's not an
Asia-Pacific matter.
And the other thing in the great scheme of things..
GEORGE NEGUS: It's an international matter, it is a world
matter, it a
global matter.
PAUL KEATING: It can be discussed but in the great scheme of
things, in
the weight of states, it's not, again, an issue.
GEORGE NEGUS: It is a security matter. You keep harping on
about how
this is all about security.
PAUL KEATING: Yeah, I know it's not security I tend to think
of states
in terms of tectonic plates. And the Chinese are a tectonic plate. You
know, they are like the things that produce those tsunamis. The
Japanese are a tectonic plate. Iraq is not a tectonic plate.
GEORGE NEGUS: We could go on. What about climate change? Is
that an
APEC issue?
PAUL KEATING: That could be an APEC issue, yeah, because it is
a big
issue. And the Asia-Pacific emitters are a bunch of bad guys when it
comes to emissions and therefore it is a useful thing to do.
GEORGE NEGUS: Good to see you, again.
PAUL KEATING: Ok