By Paul Malone
During his time in office and since then, Paul Keating has been lauded as a visionary, a great persuader and the driving force behind the major reforms introduced by the Hawke Labor government.
The latest lengthy biography of Keating, by Troy Bramston, and Bramston's supporting newspaper feature articles, maintain this line.
Bramston states, for example, that "Keating as treasurer and prime minister is the principal architect of the policies that spawned Australia's miracle economy – 25 years of continuous economic growth."
He also says that Keating was a salesman without peer.
Former prime ministers Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and Julia Gillard. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
To determine the truth of the first claim we must identify the major reforms that contributed to this economic growth.
Most would agree that they are: the floating of the dollar; the cutting of tariffs and quotas; tax reform; and opening up the economy, in particular the increasing trade with Asia.
A close examination shows that Keating was not primarily responsible for any of these.
He was not the architect of the float. Nor did he devise the Wages and Prices Accord with the unions that broke the then endemic wage/price spiral that Labor inherited on coming to government in 1983.
The major tax reforms of the past 30 years are not due to Keating.
Nor is China's remarkable economic growth, which contributed to our growth.
Despite Keating's protestations, there is no doubt that the driving force behind the float was Hawke and his office.
Those familiar with Keating in his first year as treasurer, including some from his own office and the then industry minister John Button, observed that Keating was very much in the thrall of the Treasury, led at that time by John Stone, who fiercely opposed the float.
Button said Keating told him, "You have to understand the Treasury writes the book and I speak it".
In the account of Keating's time in office written by his staffer, John Edwards, we are told that Barry Hughes, Keating's economic adviser, saw Keating as a reluctant participant in the float, who was unduly concerned about the strong objections posed by Stone.
Most tellingly, a once classified "secret" note written by Treasury deputy secretary C.R. Rye on December 13, 1983 – the day after the float – states that in the days before the float Keating seemed convinced by Stone's arguments.
"The treasurer seemed convinced by all this [Treasury arguments as to why a float was not a good idea but was favoured by the RBA and might be inevitable] but noted that the prime minister had 'bought in'."
The note says that at 11.15pm on the night before the float, Keating rang Treasury to say that "he was 'afraid' that the matter was getting away from us".
Bramston has seen this document but in his account he chooses to leave out these quotes.
Keating did not give up. In the crucial final meeting with all the key players present he put three options.
But the note says, "the prime minister summed all this up by saying that there was a view for a float and that he himself was persuaded that that was the appropriate course."
What of tax reform?
Well unquestionably the major change in the past 30 years was the introduction of the GST. Surely everyone knows that this was not due to Keating.
And here we can deal with the other claim by Bramston that Keating was a salesman without peer.
The real test of Keating's salesmanship came when he was given the job of reforming the tax system in 1985.
In December 1984 and January 1985 Keating and his staff met Hawke's team to prepare for the tax summit in July 1985 that would conclude the matter.
For months Keating wheeled his tax cart around the country, but he failed miserably to win the support of the key interest groups, never mind the general public.
On the weekend before the tax summit the Victorian Labor Party conference joined most state branches to vote against Keating's package.
In the end, no significant player at the summit supported his proposal. State premiers rejected it, business leaders were not supportive, the welfare lobby opposed it and the union movement did not want it.
So much for Keating's exceptional persuasive powers.
When he became prime minister, the opportunist Keating campaigned against the consumption tax proposed by opposition leader John Hewson.
Keating would later claim that the tax reform package he eventually introduced late in 1985 was the basis of today's tax system.
This claim has to be taken with a big grain of salt. The changes Keating finally brought in – the fringe benefits tax, the capital gains tax and abolition of entertainment deductions – were not his babies. He thought of these as the "Nasties".
They were forced upon him by the Left and Centre Left of the party.
Keating led the attack against a proposed capital gains tax in November 1981, when it was put to the party's parliamentary economic committee by then shadow treasurer, Ralph Willis.
He followed this up in July 1982, telling the ALP National Conference that those who favoured such a tax wanted Labor to commit "political hara kiri."
To swallow Keating's claim that Australia's 25 years of economic growth is due to him, we would have to believe that Keating is responsible for China's economic growth.
As far as I am aware, Deng Xiaoping did not have a Keating blueprint in his back pocket when he redirected the Chinese economy.
The 25-year run was also achieved thanks to the Rudd/Swan stimulus packages of 2008.
Keating played no significant role in the major post-war steps Australia took to develop relations with Asian countries.
Key players in this were: Black Jack McEwen, who as minister for trade and industry, courageously pioneered trade with Japan at a time when anti-Japanese feeling in Australia was at its height; Gough Whitlam, who as opposition leader, led a delegation to China at a time when the United States did not recognise the communist state and when the "Yellow Peril" was a political weapon to be used against him; Hawke, who enthusiastically exploited the resulting Chinese goodwill towards Labor and actively sought iron ore contracts.
It may be an exaggeration to say that Keating thought Asia was "somewhere you flew over on the way to Europe" but there is no evidence that Keating, as a backbencher or minister was more committed to Asia than any other politician.
Keating did push to open up the economy and have tariff cuts. But Labor can only be thankful that the leader of the government in the Senate, John Button, managed the process. As treasurer in 1990, Keating arrogantly and publicly stated that "[Button's] never been as ambitious as I have required of him and I'm requiring of him now".
Had Keating had his way, a blue-collar revolt of the type that in 2016 saw Donald Trump elected President of the United States would have swept Labor from power in 1990.
Button supported tariff reductions and copped much flak as he managed the rationalisation of the automotive industry and the closure of textile, clothing and footwear factories.
In a 2013 interview with the ABC's Kerry O'Brien, Keating claimed that the textile, clothing and footwear workers who lost their jobs as a result of tariff cuts got another job the next day.
This is rubbish. Studies of what actually happened show that four years after they lost their jobs, half the retrenched workers had not found another job.
Keating was a champion of globalisation who failed to realise that the rewards from the changes are not shared equitably.
Some in the media may still hail such politicians, but voters don't.