Paul Keating is always going to draw a crowd. He’s a marvellous raconteur, an insightful speaker with an eidetic memory, and has mastered the art of endearingly overweening arrogance, something very few people would be able to pull off.
He and Kerry O’Brien are on a book tour at the moment, they did the Melbourne event last night. Between hilarious stories about correcting the Queen on the provenance of her silverware and peeing with Bill Clinton, Keating talked a bit about leadership. He’s an expert on many things (just ask him) but his experience and understanding of leadership is proven and rock solid.
Two central things in leadership are imagination and courage. You have to have the fantasy, the dream, and then you have to have the courage to push it through.
You have to be prepared to move so fast you burn up the road behind you
His understanding of leadership is not something we’ve seen in politics for a long time, it’s the idea that leadership requires something exceptional, a vision for the future in broad strokes, the ability to conceptualise something greater than the ideas of an ordinary person. He saw it in Howard, the idea of the nation he wanted Australia to be. Obviously Keating’s opinion of Howard’s vision was not entirely positive, but he did recognise that Howard had that vision and was working towards it.
He played with some of the policy questions like a cat with a grasshopper, but the larger ideas of what Australia should be are still concepts he takes very seriously. Reconciliation and treaty to him are not just buzzwords to jazz up a speech, they are real actions that must take place to shape our identity as a nation and a cohesive people. The economic global future, the interaction between passion and intellect, the importance of arts and sciences, treaty and republic these are all part of a clarity he sees in Australia’s future that not many of us have the capacity to even fully comprehend.
Understandably he didn’t get too specific about Rudd and Gillard, (had no trouble at all getting very specific about Abbott) but he talked about how Australian politics had lost that leadership, that person at the top with a larger plan over recent year. And he seemed to think that we might, under Turnbull, have it back.
He’s has obvious and staunch differences of opinion with Turnbull, probably not as much as he did with Howard, but Keating is too much of a dyed in the wool Labor man to ever endorse a Liberal leader. Despite that, he seems to have some respect for Turnbull.
Well his biggest challenge will be trying to shift the party to the centre. You can’t be the only reasonable person in an unreasonable party. He’s gotta delouse the thing first.
Keating in full flight is a glorious thing to behold, and it was a truly memorable 90 minutes, but the thing that struck me most as I walked out was how despairing I would have been after listening to Keating speak if Abbott was still Prime Minister. Because, like Keating, whatever differences I have with Turnbull’s policies and party, I do believe he has that capacity for vision, an idea of nationhood that he wants to take us to. And if you’re have to follow someone else’s lead, it’s comforting to believe they know where they’re going.
The world is full of Humphrey Applebys, you’ve got to get them out of the room to get anything done.
And sincere thanks to the Wheeler Centre for hosting the event, if you’re in Melbourne you really should keep an eye on their site. They truly are the source of some of the most informative, insightful and hilarious events in the state. (Not a sponsored post, just a genuine opinion)