Paul Keating to maintain lobby with Asian leaders

The following article is based on an exclusive interview with former Australian prime minister Paul Keating by Ratih Hardjono, a Sydney-based correspondent of the Kompas daily. This is the first of two articles.

Question: On election day did you think you would lose?

Answer: I thought my chances on election day were greatly diminished. In 1993 election I peaked my campaign on the Saturday when the vote was taken. On this occasion I think we probably got to about 44 percent of the vote about ten days before polling day. If the election had been ten days earlier it would have been very close. We needed a perfect campaign to win after thirteen years, but in the last ten days we basically lost our control of it. The underlying theme was the community wanted a change after thirteen years of one party being in office. We began eleven percent behind and about ten days before the poll we were only probably two to three percentage points behind.

Q: What went through your mind when the results came through?

A: Just that the long period in office had come to an end, something we had all in a sense faced in 1987, 1990, 1993 and if it wasn't 1996 it would be in 1999. At some point it was going to finish. In a Western democracy such as Australia, thirteen years in a very open competitive system like this is an inordinately long time. But, campaigns do matter very greatly. In 1993, the election was won in the last week, this one was lost in the last ten days.

Q: Some sections of the Japanese media have portrayed Australians as misguided for not choosing you again? What are your thoughts on this?

A: I am a democrat and, as I said on election night, all power comes from the public, every last morsel of it. The majority has a right to decide who the government is. This I think has been a very cheerless election and a very uncelebrated election victory for the coalition. Perhaps not so within the party organization, but outside in the community it was relatively unsung and uncheered. The split ended up being 54 to 46. There was not much passion I didn't think on the side of the fifty four but there was a great deal on the side of the 46. But passion or not, the majority decides. It is their right.

Q: In your speeches during the election campaign did you think you provided a message for ordinary Australians? Did you explain? And did they want to hear?

A: I think we got to a position where it was very difficult for the government to communicate its message. Some people have said to me perhaps we should have communicated better. Well, I am not basically in the habit of pointing the finger at the media, and I am not now. But the media was most difficult for the government in the last two or three years, so short of sky writing or smoke signals on top of a mountain there were not many other ways of communicating what we did.

I think also people felt a degree of comfort about the economy, about society and the comfort gave them an opportunity they thought to make a change without themselves getting harmed. It gave them the confidence to make a change without being hurt and secondly if there had been what they saw as a big job to do, it may have been they would have kept us on to do the job. Like the recession was a job in 1993. Whereas they thought they could employ me to do things and I would do them, when there weren't any pressing things to be done maybe they thought they could bring in a government they don't really want to do things.

Q: Democracy is what the people want, but what if what the people want is not good for them? What are your thoughts on this?

A: There is a role here for leaders. A leader has a responsibility to lead. They are heads of the people, the first among equals. They have been put there and given information and resources to lead, to consult, to listen, to take advice, and explain, but above all else to lead. There is a coaxing process here.

Democracy in its operation isn't perfect but it is the source of creative power for the administration of the country and then the leaders take power and use it to the best of their ability and make the country stronger. There is an interplay between the way in which democracy garners power from the community and gives it to the government and then the head of government has a responsibility to lead, to make the power more useful, more focused, more adaptable, and more efficient.

A leader does not have a prerogative to lead beyond democracy, because even though you will find on occasion leaders who are wise and valuable we are better with the raw equation of the public majority speaking than we are with the refined thoughts and directions of an individual. The best result is the two together. A proper basis of government is the combination of democracy and wise and intuitive leaders who know how to draw on the mandate and use it well.

Q: Do you think people forget that losing is part of democracy? How have you managed this?

A: I have certainly never forgotten this because I have been in public life for twenty six and a half years. Exactly half was spent in opposition. Losing is part of it. But the amplitude of the swing is getting greater and the frequency and cycle is getting shorter. Winning and losing is all just a matter of time and circumstance rather than some sort of deep foreboding about the system. As our period of government, thirteen years, is a long time in an open and competitive democracy like ours, keeping support and being able to draw on it and use it is a very big undertaking. This is particularly so when you compete for every thought and ounce of support every day of the week and where the community is suspicious of government and doesn't like it.

Q: What are your thoughts on Pauline Hanson winning Oxley, after her comments on Aborigines? What sort of message does this send to the region?

A: It doesn't send good messages to the region. But I still believe great strides have been made in this country toward a far more genuine and broader basis of reconciliation with our indigenous people than is so elsewhere.

The passing of the native title act has, I think, generally changed a lot of Australians' attitudes toward indigenous people for the better. That is not to say when tolerated within the conservative parties, some raw expressions of racist sentiment won't find some support. But that is not that you could condemn the community of this country for having that attitude. What has happened in the electorate of Ipswich in Queensland, would not happen in Sydney or Melbourne.

Q: Are you confident about that? What is the difference between Oxley and Sydney?

A: Yes. There is a combination of factors. As a commentary of what they thought of our stewardship of the seat in the first place, and just the general political factors and swings. The Native Title Act has had it's biggest impact in Western Australia and Queensland, the two states where the most land was not appropriated and therefore where the restitution and claims on the Native Title Act would be most effective. This is also where most of the reaction is and this partly explains it.

Q: How is the region supposed to understand Bill Hayden's recent comments?

A: We find partisan sentiment in all countries. People are obviously more familiar and supportive of the customer and traditions that they find most comfortable, most usual. And, they are sometimes suspicious and very reactive against communities, customs and traditions which are different to theirs. It is not to say they are inherently racist. I don't agree with his remarks. (Hayden's comments on racism).

Q: Are you happy with Kim Beazley taking over the Labor Party?

A: This is one of the few joys that has come in this time. I think he has a very good chance of building a base of support for himself, for a return to office. For him it is perhaps better that he was not left part of a mandate in office by me. Without him having to share a mandate or be caught in the milieu of another prime minister or government, he can rebuild the party in his own way.

Remember that we suffered a very large defeat in 1975. Bill Hayden missed very narrowly becoming Prime Minister in 1980, five years later. In fact he got the same sort of vote nationally in 1980 that I got in 1993.

He was very unlucky to lose and it just shows you in five years he was able to turn it around. This is just as possible now. We can turn it around in one parliament and Kim Beazley has a very good chance of developing a whole climate of support for himself and the Labor Party in his own right and in his own image. If you look at his week in office, in parliament his contribution was very substantial; it was weighty and thoughtful. He is very experienced, thirteen years as minister. He is also from a deep political and philosophical background.

Q: How do you see yourself between Hawke and Beazley? Is there continuity in the Labor Party?

A: Oh yes. There is continuity in our philosophy. This is the thing about a developed democracy. It actually allows the parties to develop a philosophical base for their behavior. Sometimes they will implement policy better than at other times, but there is a constant philosophical thread running through it. I am sure this is true for the Labor Party whoever has been leader. Developing the parties themselves is part and parcel of developing democracy. Because they are part of the ballast and not rocked around by circumstances and events. They have weight, judgment, and experience. They are part of the lively culture of democracy itself.

So keeping our party in good fettle, good intellectual shape, and good philosophical shape is important to the fabric of democracy. You must have depth, a capacity to develop true policies and judgment weighted against the judgment of experiences of the party in and out of government. In other words there is a reservoir to draw upon and a ballast that stops it being thrown around by events.

Q: Has the Labor Party got this?

A: Indeed. One of the great structural changes of Australia in the last decade is the rejuvenation of its largest mass party, the Labor Party, while most Labor Parties around the world have been in decline, the Labor Party in Australia has been in a period of growth and intellectual ferment.

Q: What was the most single most important thing that made this happened?

A: The group of people that came to office and their willingness to face to the necessities of change and to drive it rather than being driven by it.

Q: When you were treasurer there was no indication you were interested in Asia ...

A: Well I wouldn't say there was no indication. When I was treasurer I was responsible for domestic fiscal and monetary policy, wages and such like. But in the period that I have been in public life I have always maintained an interest in the region, in foreign policy.

I always thought of Australia as being part of the region. I think it was in my maiden speech where I said: "I fear Australia is becoming a white enclave...". In my first challenge to Bob Hawke I said that I see relations with the region as one of the things uppermost in my agenda, Especially relations with Indonesia. I did that in office. Again, everything has its turn. When Hawke was prime minister, he and Hayden had charge of foreign policy.

Subsequently, it was him and Gareth Evans. What I had responsibility for was the domestic side of government. But I have always been a substantial reader of history, particularly Australia's pre and post-war history. I was very conscious of the region around this country and saw us essentially as having our future as part of it. Not one that was exclusive of it.