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Our daily reporting, in your inbox. Phillip Coorey is the political editor based in Canberra. This meant that he was responsible for dealings between federal and state governments. He held both positions until challenging Hawke for the Labor leadership on 3 June Losing the caucus vote on the leadership, Keating resigned his ministries and returned to the back bench.
National Library of Australia obj Keating became Prime Minister on 20 December , after challenging Hawke for the second time in six months. On 13 March Keating led Labor to victory in a general election which most political commentators expected it to lose. After more than four years in office, Keating took the nation to his second election as Prime Minister on 2 March Labor suffered a resounding defeat, with the Liberal—National Party coalition winning convincingly.
Keating immediately resigned as Labor leader and quit parliament. After retiring from parliament, Keating devoted himself to developing business interests. He has also acted as an occasional commentator on major events in Australia. The National Museum of Australia acknowledges First Australians and recognises their continuous connection to country, community and culture.
Prime Ministers of Australia Paul Keating. He'd hoped that the move to Sydney and a post-political life would restore harmony to his relations with Annita. Once they can escape from Canberra, they can live among the bustle of upmarket clothing shops, restaurants and antique dealers in Woollahra and get away when they want to their idyllic house on the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney, which can be reached only by boat.
But shifting house and renovating bring new pressures to bear, particularly for someone who is obsessive about how he wants things to be, and who is bitter and depressed by his defeat. As he tries to create a new life for himself, with a business base in Sydney and frequent trips overseas, the pair drift further and further apart. Despite his hopes and attempts to make it otherwise, the marriage formally comes to an end on November 30, , when they sign a separation agreement. After his painstaking renovation, it is Annita who lives in the Woollahra house with their children; she also takes up residence in the Hawkesbury home, while Keating lives with his sister until buying a four-storey terrace house in inner-Sydney's Potts Point and then renovating that to suit his demanding tastes.
Keating is devastated by the breakdown of his marriage. Growing up in the Catholic milieu of working-class Bankstown, he views marriage as being for life. He was among those who voted against the more liberal provisions of the divorce law brought in by the Whitlam government. He thought the law had "a lot of defects" and he opposed the idea of divorce being granted on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown, which only had to be evidenced by 12 months' separation.
His attitude towards women tended to be conservative. Late in his prime ministership, he is reported to have told an adviser that the "really big problem" in Australia "was all the women in the workforce. And all the children in care, or being brought up by their fathers when they should be at home with their mothers. Credit: Robert Pearce.
He remains conflicted on the issue of women in work, admiring women like his sister Anne, who excelled in business despite not getting the same amount of encouragement that he'd had from his parents, while nevertheless wishing it was otherwise. It presumably didn't help the relationship when Annita, who'd been working and living independently before her marriage, wanted to do other things in her life now that she was no longer a prime minister's wife.
While their separation has not come as a surprise, it's something Keating has difficulty accepting and hopes, perhaps, the marriage can be resurrected. He tells the NSW Labor Conference that "when you're married for 25 years, you never really get unmarried". He continues to wear his gold wedding band and to call on his family at the Woollahra house, and even buys a house of his own on the Hawkesbury, near to Annita.
But there will be no reconciliation. That becomes clear in April - by which time Keating is in a long-term relationship with actress Julieanne Newbould - when Kerry Packer's Bulletin magazine publishes a two-part interview with Annita about their break-up. The interview prompts Keating to say he was "saddened that she thought it was appropriate to share her views with the public". The couple don't formally divorce until 10 years after their separation.
And he hasn't married again. Now he must watch Howard dismantle some of his most important initiatives and set the clock back on some of the antediluvian attitudes that Keating had begun to change.
His close friend and broadcaster, Phillip Adams, says Keating could have accepted defeat by former Liberal leader John Hewson "but he found it hard to be defeated by Howard — a man he regarded as being without qualities". After all, Howard is the leader whom Keating had promised to crucify and whom he lambasted in parliament as a "mangy maggot".
Although Howard does hold a constitutional convention in to consider the republic, it's done in such a way that the outcome divides the republicans and ensures a win for the minority monarchists in the subsequent referendum.
Reconciliation with indigenous Australians becomes a second-order issue and is redefined to accord with Howard's conservative agenda, which wants to define indigenous people out of existence.
Howard refuses to concede that there was a "stolen generation" and is adamant that his government will not make an apology for the acts of previous federal governments in taking children from their Aboriginal parents. He also makes changes to the Native Title Act that have the effect of undermining the concept of native title, and appears to some of his critics to give a wink and a nod to the racist rantings of One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
There is no acknowledgment of the Hawke and Keating reforms when Howard and treasurer Peter Costello claim credit for the economic good times that Australia experiences under their government.
With his popularity at a low ebb, there is little a very embittered Keating can do about that, although he does make a point of explaining it to anyone who'll listen. Keating tells him that "Costello got hit in the arse by a rainbow.
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