The Hand Grenade Business

Paul Keating was interviewed on Lateline last night, pure gold.

For those who can't be stuffed reading the lot I'll summarise it for you.

- Says 'I'm almost bulletproof so I'm actually in the conflict business, I'm in the hand grenade business. Most people are not.'
- Calls Eddie Macguire 'Fast Eddy'
- Likens conservative journalists to Nazi's
- Drops in a mention of Mendelssohn and Mahler
- Advocates crash through or crash
- Pumps up his own economic credentials

I miss you Paul

Some memorable passages.


TONY JONES: Here is something you wrote late last year - were these changes to come about, ordinary bods would need the Packer and Murdoch organisation to stamp their passports for their free movement through ordinary society. It's a pretty big statement.


PAUL KEATING: It is. What would happen is if you cross them up they would go for you. They'd go for you in the print and if that didn't hurt you, they'd go for you in their television magazines or news and current affairs programs.

TONY JONES: You mean if you were a major politician and crossed them?

PAUL KEATING: Yes, or anybody. Anyone who suits them. Now, I've been on the receiving end of this, as you know. I had the Packer organisation the only time ever run a full 60 Minutes - one-hour program -against me, built around a pile of lies, where its primary journalist prostituted his journalism to do it. And at the same time they're into me with the Bulletin, for instance. Now, I'm almost bulletproof so I'm actually in the conflict business, I'm in the hand grenade business. Most people are not. But, let's say these organisations did have these controls, you'd have to simply keep your nose clean with them. You'd have to make sure if the Packer organisation controlled the Herald, the Age and Channel Nine, you'd have to make sure that you got on alright with little John Alexander. You'd have to be in his good books.

TONY JONES: As a politician?

PAUL KEATING: You wouldn't rub fast Eddie up the wrong way, for instance. That great Gary Linnell, that great, great power of journalism that runs now Channel Nine, you'd have to sort of keep your nose clean with him or the hapless John Lyons. This is the way that life would become. You would tippy-toe around them. Is this the kind of society we want?...

TONY JONES: Alright. You suggested in that article I quoted from last year that we're headed in the same direction as Nazi Germany. Tantamount to that - it's a huge overstatement - as well you said, "It's not as dire as the days of the Volkische Beobachter, but it's getting there."

PAUL KEATING: Yeah.

TONY JONES: By the way, for anyone who doesn't know that was Hitler's newspaper.

PAUL KEATING: The Nazi Party newspaper would have the line and you crossed that line, you know, and you crossed that line if you wanted to. For instance, they said, "We're not going to have any more music by Mendelssohn, we're not going to have any more music by Mahler." Now that's not going to happen in Australia, but the line went out and so therefore everyone just dropped them from their programs. In this country, the line goes out with all of those conservative journalists who support the current Government, but at least we have some diversity. People can get their views across, as indeed I am myself now. But, if we go to a close-down of the kind Senator Coonan is proposing, where we've got effectively two owners, why would any nation do that to itself? Why would you? Why would you let any party in power, particularly a conservative one, rule the roost in this way?...

TONY JONES: One final question - why do you think it was that no one in Federal Labor today seems able to articulate as clearly as you just did these kind of political messages?

PAUL KEATING: Well, I think you've got to be indignant, Tony. I hope I'm still - when they plant me I'm still banging on the top of the box and asking for a mobile phone. You've got to be indignant. Working people only get a crack at the title if they can have some savings and have them in the stock market. Stock markets are always reserve fodder the wealthy. Through super funds now everyone is in it, but you've got to let them in it.

TONY JONES: I'm talking about the Labor Party here. Is it a daft of talent or is it just the wrong people on centre stage.

PAUL KEATING: The Labor Party does its best on these issues. But, you know, to get something like super through, you've got to crash through a lot of barriers. It's a hard reform, it's a very hard business and it is not for pole-driven parties. The trouble about the Liberal Party today and the Labor Party they are focused and poll-driven. I never was. I never was. But look at the things that are around. Look, we've had 15 years of growth, low inflation, super. These things came out of a vision of the place being better.