Politics is not a game. It is an earnest business - Churchill

Canberra seems to have forgotten its Churchill quotes again, as the feverish party games continue. Julia Gillard is stumbling around playing blind man’s buff with the Real Julia; Tony Abbott is stuck in an endless Pin the Tail on the donkey loop and he still can’t work out which ass he’s playing with. Joe Hockey, Wayne Swan and Nicola Roxon are re-enacting a Play School tea party while Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten mutter sulkily in a corner and wait for Musical Chairs to start again. Meanwhile, the Canberra press gallery plays tiddly winks in front of a mirror and the electorate gives them all a resounding ‘meh’, then turns to the likes of Andrew Bolt and Mia Freedman for analysis on policy and international affairs. Sometimes, as the Parliamentary Class of 2011 demonstrate exactly why political parties shouldn’t elect their leaders during a poll-driven temper tantrum, I YouTube Paul Keating videos and sigh.

Keating’s vision and arrogance, his reforming zeal and gifted oratory, his rapier wit and the brain that entered a room 3 hours before he did, made him a political player to fear and admire.

I could fill thousands of pages on Keating’s politics, abilities, achievements and failures or his economic reforms that changed Australia forever, but it would be pointless; it’s already been done by better and more knowledgeable writers than me. Don Watson’s Recollections Of A Bleeding Heart and Paul Kelly’s The March of the Patriots are two of the better ones, but there are many others.

Keating has refused to write an auto-biography, despite all the tearful pleadings from downtrodden publishing houses, but there are enough of his quotes, videos and speeches recorded to remind us all what political games were like when the grown-ups used to play. Enjoy; then watch Question Time tomorrow and weep a little bit.

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“We simply cannot sweep injustice aside. Even if our own conscience allowed us to, I am sure, that in due course, the world and the people of our region would not. There should be no mistake about this - our success in resolving these issues will have a significant bearing on our standing in the world. However intractable the problems may seem, we cannot resign ourselves to failure - any more than we can hide behind the contemporary version of Social Darwinism which says that to reach back for the poor and dispossessed is to risk being dragged down.” - from the Redfern Address, December, 1992

On former Governor-General John Kerr: “You just can’t have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.”

On Kim Beazley’s Leadership: “Those kind of conservative, tea-leaf-reading, focus group driven, polling types led Kim into nothingness, he’s got his life to repent what they did to him.”

On the Senate: “I would forbid him going to the Senate, to account to that unrepresentative swill over there.”

On Peter Costello: “The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg.”

On the modern ALP: “The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won’t get out of bed in the morning unless they’ve had a focus group report to tell them which side of bed to get out.”

“A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the immigrants’ ambitions it was built.” - Address to the Dáil Éireann, September, 1993.

On John Howard: “What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him.”

“I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not slither out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot.”

To Wilson Tuckey: “You boxhead, you wouldn’t know. You are flat out counting past ten.”

On Former Leader of the Opposition, John Hewson: “(His performance) is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.”

“John Hewson is prepared to be fairy flossed away by some spaced out, vacuous ad agency.”

“Hewson’s only made the grade on paid advertisements. He’s put me under no pressure at all. The only one who’s put us under pressure on any issue is Peacock. He’s an old cynic and he goes for the issues. Hewson’s on television a lot but he hasn’t put me under any pressure.”

In reply to John Hewson’s demand to know why Keating would not call an early election: “The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the Australian public with this thing, trying to rip away our social wage, trying to rip away the Australian values which we built in our society for over a century.”

On Former National Party Leader, Ian Sinclair: “What we have as a leader of the National Party is a political carcass with a coat and tie on.”

On former Liberal Party Leader and Shadow Treasurer, Andrew Peacock: “It is the first time the Honourable Gentleman has got out from under the sunlamp.”

“I suppose that the Honourable Gentleman’s hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness.”

“He could not rise above his own opportunism or his incapacity to lead.”

“What we have here is an intellectual rust bucket”

“We’re not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos.”

“You’ve been in the dye pot again, Andrew.”

On Tony Abbott: “If you want to go round telling lies all your life, historical lies like Abbott does, fine, [but] do we really want little John Howard? It was bad enough having the real John Howard.”

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