There have been two topics on which former Australian prime minister Paul Keating has been a persistent, passionate commentator in the three decades since his retirement. One was intensely local: Sydney urban planning. The other was as wide as the world: the global order and Australia’s place in it.
Each came out of what James Curran calls “his deep desire to find unity or harmonious integration in all things”. Or, as his adviser Allan Gyngell put it, “Keating liked things that worked, that fitted together well, properly. So a good piece of policy was to be appreciated as much as a French imperial clock.”
