This video is worth the watch.

However, while Paul Keating rightly argues that Australia is capable of defending itself, and intrinsically linked to Asia through trade, his economic outlook still has a blind spot. He fails to grasp how privatised economic rent (‘super profit’) generates economic instability.

Even now, there’s no evidence to suggest Keating understood that the 1973 crash in real estate prices triggered the demise of the Whitlam government and set the stage for its landslide defeat in 1975 following “the dismissal“.

Captured by the neoliberal agenda, Keating finally privatised the Commonwealth Bank in 1996 and introduced compulsory superannuation, seemingly operating under the premise that the Australian government could run out of its own currency and be unable to fund pensions.

Keating is far from alone in maintaining this curiously misguided stance.