澳大利亞和中國 與保羅·基廷的對話

澳大利亞和中國：與保羅·基廷的對話

2022 年 10 月 12 日
拉籌伯大學，悉尼校區
悉尼伊麗莎白街 255 號 1 樓

AUSTRALIA AND CHINA: A CONVERSATION WITH PAUL KEATING

12 October 2022
La Trobe University, Sydney Campus
Level 1, 255 Elizabeth Street, Sydney

發言人：
拉籌伯大學高級副校長（研究和行業參與）蘇珊·多茲教授

澳大利亞第 24 任總理保羅·基廷閣下

悉尼大學現代史教授詹姆斯·柯倫教授

文字記錄

蘇珊·多茲教授：
大家好，我是蘇珊·多茲教授，拉籌伯大學研究高級副校長。我很高興今晚來到悉尼參加今晚的思想與社會活動——澳大利亞和中國：與保羅·基廷的對話。我想承認，Eora 民族的 Gadigal 人是我們正在廣播的土地（拉籌伯大學悉尼校區）的傳統守護者。我向過去和現在的長者致敬。

歡迎參加今年思想與社會計劃的第四場活動。這是拉籌伯大學副校長研究員、名譽教授 Robert Manne 第 13 年發表思想與社會。思想與社會將傑出的澳大利亞人聚集在一起，共同思考我們國家和世界麵臨的重大問題。今年之前的活動探討了俄羅斯對烏克蘭的戰爭、澳大利亞養老院的危機以及澳大利亞對 COVID 19 疫情的處理。

今晚的討論結束後，該係列的下一場活動將於 10 月 25 日舉行，屆時 Tim Flannery 將與 Ross Garnaut 討論他的新書《超級大國轉型：打造澳大利亞的零碳未來》，這本書恰好由拉籌伯大學出版社出版。您可以通過拉籌伯大學網站注冊。今年 11 月的最後一場活動將討論綠黨和青色黨獨立人士在新當選的聯邦議會中的作用，主持人是拉籌伯大學另一位校長研究員 Cathy McGowan；參加者包括綠黨的 Adam Bandt 和 Max Chandler-Mather；青色黨獨立人士 Zoe Daniel 和支持幾位青色黨議員當選眾議院議員的氣候倡議創始人 Simon Holmes à Court。

現在開始今晚的活動，這個話題和我們的演講者幾乎不需要任何介紹。人們對這次活動非常感興趣，事實上，我們已經有超過 3500 人報名，這是大學有史以來最受歡迎的討論之一。澳大利亞位於大洋洲，介於印度洋和太平洋之間，這意味著我們不應該，也不能忽視我們地區的力量，特別是那些對我們的未來至關重要的力量。中國作為軍事和經濟強國的崛起就是其中一個因素。我們還發現自己陷入了中美外交關係惡化的境地。如果說有什麽不同的話，那就是在疫情期間，問題隻會升級，包括貿易禁運、雙方被指控從事間諜活動，以及與台灣和新疆有關的新緊張局勢。目前，這兩個大國之間存在“新冷戰”的威脅，而且顯然，在拜登總統的領導下，兩國關係不太可能有太大改善。這對我們地區意味著什麽？對我們的貿易和安全意味著什麽？這對人權考慮或全球應對氣候變化的鬥爭有何影響？在莫裏森政府締結《澳大利亞與美國條約》之後，在阿爾巴尼斯的領導下，澳大利亞對華政策將發生多大變化？我們對中國的回應對我們與美國的關係意味著什麽？

此外，華盛頓、北京和堪培拉之間的政策動態如何？我們很高興這位經驗豐富、專業知識淵博的澳大利亞前總理能與澳大利亞最敏銳的曆史學家和外交事務評論員之一一起探討這些問題和其他問題。我很榮幸地介紹我們的貴賓——尊敬的保羅·基廷，他於 1991 年至 1996 年擔任澳大利亞第 24 任總理，並於 1983 年至 1991 年擔任澳大利亞財政部長。他的政治遺產包括根本性的經濟和社會改革，包括放鬆對澳大利亞金融、產品和勞動力市場的管製，建立澳大利亞的強製性退休金製度，製定原住民土地權立法，以及成立亞太經合組織領導人會議。基廷先生的著作包括《接觸：澳大利亞麵對亞太》，該書於 2000 年出版，並被翻譯成中文和日文，以及《後記》一書，該書是澳大利亞總理卸任後的演講集。基廷先生繼續為澳大利亞和國際經濟問題、地緣政治、外交政策和安全以及退休金的公開辯論做出貢獻。他專門研究東亞的地緣戰略環境。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授是悉尼大學的現代史教授，也是《澳大利亞金融評論報》的外交事務專欄作家。他為洛伊研究所和《中國事務》撰寫了政策論文分析。詹姆斯曾擔任都柏林大學學院基思·卡梅倫主席，並曾是富布賴特學者

喬治城大學。

在成為學者之前，他曾在總理和內閣部工作，並在國家評估辦公室擔任情報分析員。詹姆斯出版了許多關於澳大利亞政治文化和外交事務的書籍。他的書《澳大利亞的中國奧德賽：從欣喜到恐懼》由新南威爾士圖書出版。我很高興把發言權交給詹姆斯，開始討論。謝謝。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

非常感謝多茲教授。我還要向拉籌伯大學思想與社會項目召集人名譽教授羅伯特·曼恩表示感謝和感激，並感謝在澳大利亞乃至世界各地的所有人，感謝你們今晚收聽保羅·基廷的討論。

我認為與中國和澳大利亞外交政策的辯論往往過於現實主義。當然，這其中有可以理解的原因，但問題之一是，曆史和背景因素常常被犧牲。基廷先生和我在會前討論中一致認為，這次對話應該圍繞政治事件表麵之下的曆史構造力量展開。我們要努力辨別國際事務的根本模式，而不是挑剔不連貫的碎片。

幾年前，美國前國家安全顧問兼國務卿亨利
基辛格表示，他擔心當今的領導人不再有時間進行曆史思考。他擔心，目前的政客們正在努力“形成對世界和自己的認知”。基辛格接著說，我引用他的話：“我們應該將當前的認知活動深化到更適合概念思維的水平，而不是迎合當下的情緒。”
這就是我們今晚即將進行的討論的內容。保羅·基廷是一位領導者，我認為這一點無需多言，他為政府帶來了一些關於世界的理念。這些理念以曆史觀和領導者在曆史中的作用為基礎，並汲取了一生對身份和文化相互作用的思考。保羅·基廷，感謝您抽出時間。

保羅·基廷議員：

謝謝詹姆斯，很高興來到這裏。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

考慮到這個介紹，以及我們來這裏的目的，我想帶您回到今年 80 年前。新加坡淪陷，1942 年。您出生在兩年後的 1944 年，第二年您的叔叔比利在山打根-拉瑙死亡行軍中喪生。在您的整個職業生涯中，您一直說第二次世界大戰“把我們拖入了亞洲”，因此，我們不應該像以前那樣與強大而強大的朋友完全依賴對方。到那時，與英國的戰略聯盟顯然已經破裂。

正如您多次指出的那樣——我引用您的話說——“我們在這個地區孤身一人，無助地徘徊”。我們想要多少次被教導這個關於依賴的愚蠢的教訓？

保羅·基廷議員：

好吧，我本以為，在 1942-1945 年一次重要的教訓之後，我們就不必再學習了，一個繼承了一塊大陸的社會，我曾經在內閣中說過，當他們分發大陸時，沒有多少人能得到。我們與其他國家沒有邊界。我們有一個大陸，因此我們有能力在這裏過上體麵的生活，維護我們公民的安全，在需要的時候能夠合理地保衛國家，這些都是我們完全有能力做到的。如果你看看我們最近在 20 世紀 80 年代和 90 年代的經曆，很明顯我們能夠做到這一點。

這並不是說我們告訴朋友我們不再需要他們，比如美國，或者我們不欣賞他們。但是，地緣戰略上的糾纏問題意味著你妥協了你的外交政策行動，並將其外包給另一個國家。這就是糾纏的後果。
而例如，我作為總理做的最後一件事，我與印度尼西亞簽訂了一項共同防禦協議。這是我與蘇哈托總統簽訂的《維護安全條約》。我們2000萬人，技術水平相當高，2.5億人。如果你願意的話，我們兩人真的能夠抵抗任何地區壓力。

換句話說，如果我們自己做，我們可以做到這些事情。我從冷啟動開始組織了亞太經合組織領導人會議，與喬治·赫伯特·布什、加雷思·埃文斯一起製定了柬埔寨和平協定和化學武器公約。我們能夠做這些事情，並建造我們的潛艇。金·比茲利和我都是柯林斯級潛艇的推動者。關鍵是，如果你擁有一個大陸，就需要阻止其他人進入它。

你想要海上拒止能力，我們有能力做到

拒絕能力，執行

明智的外交政策，不受美國或任何其他人的控製。被控製並不明智。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

不，沒錯。我想帶您回到 30 年前的 1992 年。您提到了您擔任總理時發起的一些事情。1992 年初，您是澳大利亞新任總理，1991 年 12 月剛剛接替鮑勃·霍克。您上任時正值 20 世紀末，當時的地緣政治結構剛剛發生重大頓悟：冷戰結束，蘇聯解體。

當時，像您這樣的領導人，當然還有美國總統，麵臨著明智和審慎的治國之道。您當時是如何看待這個機會的？這與您上任時所持的特定曆史觀有何關聯？您從年輕時就一直在思考這一曆史觀，您讀過的一些書也與您有關：關於丘吉爾和羅斯福等領導人的書，這些書激發了您的想象力，並促使您投身政治生活。

保羅·基廷先生：

米哈伊爾·戈爾巴喬夫小心翼翼地讓蘇聯失望，喬治·赫伯特·布什總統和詹姆斯·貝克等人則刻意而毫不掩飾地讓這些碎片脫離了蘇聯。事情發生了——戈爾巴喬夫在我擔任總理五天後簽署了這份文件。五天後，我在悉尼的 Kirribilli House 迎來了一位美國總統。

您可以看到，開放區域主義有巨大的機會。也就是說，冷戰的兩極化已經結束。電力供應中斷，舊經互會集團中的各州逐漸疏遠。蘇聯內部國家宣布獨立。開放的區域主義有機會實現。

如果你環顧世界的這個角落，我們可以把中國、越南等納入這裏的國家大家庭，正是考慮到這一點，我向喬治·赫伯特·布什和當時與他一起擔任國家安全顧問的布倫特·斯考克羅夫特將軍建議，這是一個讓美國更具戰略性地參與亞洲事務的機會，而且是在總統層麵，而不是國務卿或財政部長層麵，這是亞太經合組織最初的目標。但通過將總統的權威帶到那裏，白宮每年每周都會有人擔心東亞和太平洋問題。

我認為這就是我們可以做到的。每隔十年左右，美國就會與中國舉行一次雙邊會談；你知道，尼克鬆/毛澤東式的會談；隨著中國崛起，冷戰結束，像印度尼西亞這樣的國家的地位也隨之上升。日本是與不結盟運動的領導者，日本一直在亞洲徘徊，而中國就在附近。我認為，這是一個將兩者結合起來的機會。布倫特·斯考克羅夫特在會上對我說：“首相，你正在為美國和亞洲闡明一項我們自己尚未闡明的政策。”事實就是如此，我認為我們有這個後冷戰時期的機會，但我認為這不僅僅是我看到的地區機會。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

你確實在那次會議上說過，你說總統，這是直接對喬治·H·W·布什總統說的，“總統現在有機會以自 1914 年以來前所未有的方式行使國際領導權；俄羅斯、其他前蘇聯共和國、中歐和東歐國家、中國和墨西哥都在這種背景下試圖進入世界市場。建立與英國二戰後布雷頓森林體係一樣有影響力的機構至關重要”。

這又回到了羅斯福的世界觀，不是嗎？羅斯福的世界觀深深地吸引了你——這是自由國際主義在世界體係中蓬勃發展的另一個機會嗎？

保羅·基廷議員：

我一直……我沒有英雄，但有兩個最接近的英雄羅斯福和丘吉爾。丘吉爾是 19 世紀的政治家，羅斯福是 20 世紀的政治家，但他們都有自己的偉大之處。我們經常聽到的美國自由國際主義實際上隻持續了 30 年。它從 1915 年持續到 1945 年，直到富蘭克林·羅斯福去世。伍德羅·威爾遜和第一次世界大戰，富蘭克林·羅斯福和第二次世界大戰。兩人都相信包容。伍德羅·威爾遜的國際聯盟。富蘭克林·羅斯福的聯合國。他們在第一次世界大戰和第二次世界大戰的戰火結束時看到了擁有更具代表性的世界權力結構的機會，那就是多極世界。不是一個由 1945 年的勝利者統治的世界，而是一個多極世界。當然，羅斯福在他實現這個夢想之前就去世了。問題在於

對他來說，聯合國的夢想就是斯大林。正如喬治·凱南所說，斯大林有意識形態的觀點。你看，蘇聯是一個尋求世界霸權的意識形態國家。但拋開蘇聯的思想，看看羅斯福的直覺。他的直覺是多極世界，這是真正具有代表性的，當然，隨之而來的是殖民主義的終結。

那麽戰艦上是密蘇裏號嗎？丘吉爾想保住印度，羅斯福說：“印度不再有英國人，印度尼西亞不再有荷蘭人，印度支那不再有法國人”。他希望看到人民自由，他想背棄殖民主義，他希望代表權得到代表。這就是冷戰結束時所缺失的東西。這就是比爾·克林頓的失敗，喬治·W·布什的失敗，也是巴拉克·奧巴馬和特朗普的失敗。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

這是美國未能在一個真正具有代表性的國際結構中為中國、印度、俄羅斯找到並為其提供一席之地，對嗎？你會說，我們得到的是冷戰後的混亂，對嗎？

保羅·基廷議員：

認為你可以擁有一個單極世界。這是曆史的終結。曆史的終結並沒有持續多久。這就是關鍵所在。你看，我很久以前就說過，從 1997 年左右開始，我就攻擊北約的擴張，試圖將舊俄羅斯、前蘇聯圍起來，咬掉餡餅皮；你可以看到這給我們帶來了什麽。

我當時談論的是代表性結構。我當時敦促比爾·克林頓為中國找到一席之地。當然，1996 年和 1997 年，中國在戰略和經濟上都沒有什麽作為。但我一直認為，隻要我們有 G7 結構，就永遠不會有一個運作良好、和平的世界……看看 G7。意大利和加拿大與英國並列，而世界另一端的中國，其 GDP 比美國還大，但它卻不在其中。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

非常有趣的是，柏林牆倒塌時，當時美國政府內部顯然有一種感覺，這不是在蘇聯共產主義的墳墓上跳舞的機會，但到了 1992 年 1 月，當 H.W. 布什發表國情谘文時，他說“感謝上帝，美國贏得了冷戰”。他們有這種美國慶祝的感覺。

保羅·基廷議員：

基本上，當時我在一次談話中對比爾·克林頓說：“你們要弄清楚 40 年後你們如何坐在最高位置，坐在最高位置的頂端”，而他們對美國說：“你是什麽意思，我們總是坐在最高位置”，這等於說：“世界上還會有其他大國，顯然俄羅斯仍是擁有核武器的國家，當然還有中國。”

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

在我們對今晚活動的初步討論中，您提到了這一點……您說我們發動了兩次世界大戰，以解決德國在歐洲的地位問題。您回憶說，1871 年德國統一時，德皇在凡爾賽宮加冕，英國、俄羅斯和法國外交官可能正坐在那裏的沙礫上等待，並說：“我們要怎麽對待這個德國新貴？”現在，我們又有了一個新的對手——中國。這個教訓告訴我們什麽？我們是否必須再來一場全球戰爭來解決中國的地位問題？

保羅·基廷議員：

我們確實發動了兩次世界大戰來解決德國的地位問題。你可以經曆這些戰火，但最終還是會達成和解。為什麽不在戰火之前達成和解呢？你會認為，即使是納粹，當他們看到自己的國家被美國和英國的地毯式轟炸摧毀時，他們也會說，“我們最好現在就做一筆交易”。所以你知道，這就是問題所在。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

這就是你所說的“憤怒的複仇”政策。地毯式轟炸。

保羅·基廷議員：

就是這樣。憤怒的報複……我認為，美國和中國麵臨的真正巨大挑戰是……我有自己的觀點……其他人也認同我的觀點。茲比格涅夫·布熱津斯基就是其中之一。布熱津斯基是冷戰的終極鬥士。希特勒和斯大林分裂波蘭時，他還是個十幾歲的少年。他成為了美國公民。他成為了吉米·卡特總統的首席美國戰略顧問。他基本上是負責執行尼克鬆毛澤東協議的。布熱津斯基是必須實施該協議的人。我保留了他在 2012 年說過的一些話。讓我讀一讀。

“在美國，未來幾十年的核心挑戰將是振興自身，同時推動更大的西方發展並適應中國不斷上升的全球地位。”你注意到，“適應”不是競爭；適應。他談到了更大的西方，包括俄羅斯和土耳其。一個更大的西方。然後他談到了亞洲，美國應該成為該地區的平衡者和調解者。

美國是大西洋的擔保人，也是東方的平衡力量。不是東方的擔保人，不是等級製力量；而是平衡力量。他接著說：“美國應該尊重……能夠也應該幫助亞洲國家避免爭奪地區主導地位，同時調解衝突，抵消潛在競爭對手之間的權力不平衡。美國應該尊重中國在維護遠東大陸穩定方麵發揮的特殊曆史和地緣政治作用。”

重複：“美國應該尊重中國在維護遠東大陸穩定方麵發揮的特殊曆史和地緣政治作用。”他接著說：“美國還必須認識到，亞洲的穩定不能再由非亞洲國家強加，至少不能由美國直接運用軍事力量。”他在這裏假設……是我一直相信的，亞洲的平衡力量、穩定力量是中國。不是日本。日本已經對我們其他國家發動了攻擊。你知道，第二次世界大戰……日俄戰爭。如今人口不斷減少，中國不太可能發動戰爭。但在此期間，中國沒有攻擊任何人。
中國沒有攻擊任何人。他們生活在那個碗狀區域——北邊是西伯利亞和蒙古，東邊是喜馬拉雅山。南邊是印度支那，東邊是太平洋。他們不攻擊其他國家。所以布熱津斯基說：“美國應該尊重中國特殊的曆史和地緣政治角色。”你如何尊重他們的角色？鑒於中國按購買力平價計算的國內生產總值現在比美國大 20%——是一個比美國國內生產總值更大的國家。它有一支龐大的海軍。你擁有 20% 的人類。

推斷一下，布熱津斯基的觀點是美國可以與中國合作管理世界。換句話說，美國鞏固了大西洋，這是我在演講中反複使用的一個短語，美國鞏固了大西洋，包括將俄羅斯帶入歐洲，而在東方，穩定是由中國提供的。但美國仍然作為平衡力量存在。

我認為，這種模式對整個世界都是有利的，因為
中國人並沒有試圖推翻現有體係。讓我們把這一點說清楚。中國不是舊蘇聯。它不是在輸出意識形態。它是西方現有安排的一部分。它是世界貿易組織、世界衛生組織、國際貨幣基金組織、世界銀行的成員，它希望加入跨太平洋夥伴關係協定，幾年前，它的主席在達沃斯為全球化辯護。它不想顛覆現有體係。

但它不想成為一個“負責任的利益相關者”，用鮑勃·佐利克的話來說，這是一個由美國運營的專有體係。坦率地說，如此龐大的經濟體量和占人類 20% 的經濟體，為什麽要這麽做？

為什麽要這麽做？

你可以讓意大利、加拿大、英國和澳大利亞等旗手加入 G7，並說“我們可以……統治世界……”

2011 年，我在堪培拉與外交和國防大臣進行了交談。我當時說，最重要的是，美國不要將中國視為戰略挑戰者和全麵反製力量……換句話說，將中國的崛起視為世界結構有序發展的必然結果。我們不希望重演 1892 年俄羅斯和法國締結協約以平衡德國或英國於 1904 年加入協約的情形。

一旦出現兩極分化和僵化，薩拉熱窩王儲的去世將使整個局麵崩潰。在兩極結構中，每個時刻都會被放大。

我認為……你看……十年前曾討論過 G2。當然，G1 指的是美國，G2 指的是中國。換句話說，你需要了解其中的微妙之處。G2 是一個從屬角色。但中國不再是 G2，中國想要的是 G1 和 G1，一個不攻擊其他國家的國家，一個對世界經濟做出重大貢獻的國家，一個在 25 年內抑製通貨膨脹、同時幫助 20% 的人類擺脫貧困的主要力量。美國是否無法在這裏達成多極解決方案？

我可能會說，這樣的解決方案包括印度等國家。我曾討論過……和

印度尼西亞。但這種認為美國是超強國家的想法，作為民主的傳播者，它有上帝的耳朵，其他國家必須跟隨。這在 20 世紀是好的。20 世紀是美國的世紀。21 世紀不是美國的世紀。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

如果可以的話，我想談談這個問題。你提出了為什麽我們不能在衝突之前達成和解的關鍵問題。問題是，你已經開始討論這個問題了，美國人願意嗎？也就是說，當我們處於這種兩極分化已經根深蒂固的境地時。華盛頓兩黨就這一問題達成了強烈的共識。

她的戰略競爭或新冷戰。美國甚至與中國達成妥協，甚至達成妥協，或多或少都會被描述為綏靖政策，或者讓我們把慕尼黑神話拋在腦後。
這是美國能做的事情嗎？放棄其主導地位的想法？

保羅·基廷議員：

如果領導得當，是的。詹姆斯，中國的野心在西方，而不是東方。美國和澳大利亞等國家存在一個很大的混淆，認為一切都圍繞著東海和南海。那是中國的前門墊。他們隻是不想讓任何其他有台灣的國家在他們的海岸上。他們真正感興趣的是“斯坦”國家。也就是中亞。作為“一帶一路”倡議的結果，我認為你可以說，在未來 30 年裏，從武漢到伊斯坦布爾的任何地方都將受到中國的巨大影響，而無需爭論。他們已經在巴基斯坦西側的瓜達爾港為那些“斯坦”國家——烏茲別克斯坦、哈薩克斯坦修建了一個港口。

這些小國永遠地失去了舊蘇聯。

現在，根據該計劃，中國計劃，他們可以通過格但斯克進入比斯開灣和波羅的海。你會看到德國人和法國人加入進來。中國人一直在擔心馬六甲海峽，以及他們如何通過陸路，穿過亞洲的大草原，將貨物和材料運到中國。

“一帶一路”基本上就是為了實現這一點。如果你看看中國的增長能力。另一點是——我們生活的城市社會，大約有 80% 到 90% 的城市化。美國、英國、德國、法國、澳大利亞……

中國有大約 60% 的城市化。它在國內還有很大的增長空間。它的增長
通過中亞。所以，你不需要成為人口統計學家或統計學家就能算出，如果根據國際貨幣基金組織的數據，中國經濟的 GDP 已經比美國高出 20%，那麽 25 年或 30 年之後，它會達到什麽水平？如果美國不接受這個數字，那利潤又在哪裏？這就是現實。
因此，我們可以用“圍堵中國”來保護自己的想法有點不合法。它並沒有攻擊任何人，但它仍然是不合法的。這是一派胡言。一個頭腦好、思想開放、富有創造力的美國總統仍然可以發展出一個多極結構。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：我想知道，澳大利亞戰略家和外交政策思想家是否難以麵對這個問題。美國很可能不再相信自己。這是一個澳大利亞人不習慣的非常不同的美國。你看到了特朗普當選時的反應，特朗普不相信美國例外論，我的意思是，他不相信基於規則的秩序，他不相信聯盟。

保羅·基廷議員：
沒有基於規則的秩序。走進伊拉克，那是在什麽規則下？或者阿富汗，那是在什麽規則下？

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我們能否直接討論美國聯盟，美國澳大利亞聯盟，並更詳細地回顧一下這段曆史，當你在政府任職時，甚至在你任職之前。我隻想引用我最近采訪美國研究中心首席執行官邁克爾·格林時說的一句話作為開場白，他提到你、休·懷特和鮑勃·卡爾是“公開質疑聯盟的人”，他說你顯然“把中國的情況告訴澳大利亞人民，批評美國”。
他補充說：“這看起來不太好，確實讓奧巴馬政府和特朗普政府初期的人們有些緊張。”保羅·基廷，我能問一下你對這個評價有什麽反應嗎？

保羅·基廷議員：
嗯，現在美國和代表他們的人對有思想的盟友不感興趣。他們基本上對那些沒有思想的盟友的諂媚者一視同仁。就我個人而言，我在這裏提出了幾點。

美國對那些一生堅持下去的人特別忘恩負義。我就是其中之一。在工黨的二十年裏，我支持美國聯盟，反對當時的親共左派，溫和的親共左派。

當約翰·霍華德參加英國國教主日學校義賣會時，我在市政廳與共產黨人作戰。這是一場真正的戰鬥。當我和鮑勃·霍克一起去的時候，他邀請我在第一次旅行中會見裏根總統……鮑勃一生都受到左派的支持，他希望對美國有一定的了解。
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我說：“鮑勃，如果我是你，我會積極擁抱裏根總統，因為他是個快樂的人，而你的朋友喬治·舒爾茨在 83 年之後的關係。”特別是考慮到 70 年代惠特拉姆政府的問題，他們對此記憶猶新。
惠特拉姆和尼克鬆之間的問題。我說：“鮑勃，這是

黑白大軍。他們對灰色不感興趣。讓我們熱情地擁抱他們，讓我們繼續前進。”我不是說我是唯一一個對鮑勃有影響的人，但我對他有很大的影響。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
就在那時，鮑勃說——我們“永遠在一起”，澳大利亞和美國。
保羅·基廷先生：
我要說的是，羅恩是一位很棒的主人。冷戰後的第一個政策承諾是，在喬治·赫伯特·布什總統領導下的美國的支持下，聯合國決定抵抗伊拉克和薩達姆·侯賽因對科威特的襲擊，這被稱為沙漠盾牌。
我目前是副總理，鮑勃·霍克叫我去開會。鮑勃說：“總統要打電話來，想知道我們對科威特的立場是什麽。”我說：“鮑勃，你在加拿大的夥伴 [布萊恩] 馬爾羅尼呢，你告訴我
他是個多麽好的人，英國的約翰·梅傑呢？他們是北約成員國，
他們在做什麽？為什麽我們要第一個舉手？”
鮑勃說：“你知道，自願參加並不好。” 也就是說，自願參加。所以我參加了這次會議。我控製了黨派的權力。我不僅僅是副總理。我說，如果這是冷戰後聯合國的第一次行動，而美國想要支持這一承諾，我支持這樣做。但我說：“如果你的夥伴馬爾羅尼和梅傑在拖後腿，那我們就早點加入，但要低價。”

我們已經在海灣有一艘油輪，我們可以把一艘驅逐艦放在海灣的頂部。

鮑勃說“好的”。但我說，鮑勃，不要作戰部隊，不要飛機。他說“不，不，沒關係”，他按了一個按鈕，服務員進來了，我們都喝了一杯茶。

然後做出了決定。今天我們從美國那裏得到了多少感謝？零感謝。

然後當我看到你提到喬治·赫伯特·布什和把亞太經合組織領導人會議聚集在一起時……美國是一場以歐洲為中心的表演。它沒有亞洲政策，沒有太平洋政策。
它一直由海軍管理。太平洋政策由檀香山製定。沒有國務院參與。我以澳大利亞總理的身份來到這裏，我說“太平洋怎麽辦？”我接受了，得到了喬治·赫伯特的同意。喬治·布什說，“如果我們這樣做，它就會爆炸”。保羅說“你來做”。我和日本首相、蘇哈托總統、泰國總理、新加坡總理、加拿大總理和中國國家主席談過。
在一段時間內，我為亞太經合組織領導人會議達成了共識。喬治·12·赫伯特·布什輸掉了選舉，比爾·克林頓得到了結果。我向比爾·克林頓提出了我已經製定的安排。他對我說：“你看，我是靠‘經濟才是關鍵’這個競選綱領擊敗喬治·布什的，我不想卷入科威特這樣的外交事務。”

你要求我做的是加入一個戰略機構。我告訴你我會怎麽做——我會加入，隻要你讓它看起來像一個貿易機構。然後我和他就此展開了激烈的討價還價，我們決定在西雅圖會麵。波音和微軟的總部看起來好像是在討論太平洋彼岸的就業問題。但你我都知道，美國總統與中國國家主席、日本首相、印度尼西亞總統坐在一起。在領導層麵，這當然是一次戰略會議。這是澳??大利亞外交政策的結果——這是我送給美國的個人禮物。他們不會為此感謝或感激你。這就是為什麽我不太在意他們。詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
您是否對美國方麵對這種批評的敏感性感到驚訝？
保羅·基廷議員：
他們想要傻瓜……作為對話者，作為盟友。他們說，讓我們來思考。我們讓他們思考，而這種思考並不是很好。這就是關鍵所在。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我們稍後會回到這個問題上，因為我認為，在聯盟問題和美國和澳大利亞軍隊的“可互換性”問題上，有很多最新進展值得一提。在此之前，我想問一個關於四方安全對話的問題。以及近年來人們對四方安全對話寄予的巨大希望。當然，四方安全對話現在已升格為領導人會議，近年來也更頻繁地舉行會議。
現在，這裏的一個問題當然是，自俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭以來，我們已經收到了許多印度就俄羅斯入侵烏克蘭的立場的道歉。公平地說，這些道歉是在印度總統莫迪最近公開斥責弗拉基米爾·普京之前做出的。這是公開譴責。當然，與此同時，印度仍在派遣軍隊參加東方站與中國和俄羅斯軍隊的軍事演習。澳大利亞國立大學著名的四方安全對話倡導者之一是羅裏·梅特卡夫，他說，在烏克蘭危機爆發之初，印度采取了“冷酷的基於利益的

解決烏克蘭困境的策略是，但從長遠來看，烏克蘭的未來掌握在西方手中”。他說，四方安全對話和其他印度朋友成功說服印度改變這種策略，“不是通過勇敢地呼籲價值觀來實現的，而是通過幫助印度改變其國家利益考量來實現的”。你覺得其他人可以改變印度的國家利益考量這個觀點怎麽樣？
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保羅·基廷議員：這隻是業餘時間的胡說八道。四方安全對話是戰略上的胡說八道。印度對澳大利亞很重要，因為它是南亞的關鍵國家，也是印度洋的主導者。我們應該以此為基礎接近印度，但不是采用某種珍珠鏈式的想法，即我們可以聯合起來遏製中國，這基本上是已故首相安倍晉三的想法。我們可以把美國和澳大利亞串在一起，利用印度來抵抗中國。你能想象一支由印度海軍艦艇組成的艦隊進入馬六甲海峽，駛入中國海與中國軍隊作戰，捍衛西方價值觀嗎？美國或澳大利亞的價值觀。你永遠都不會看到這種情況。我應該告訴你。基辛格和我一起參與了這項工作。我們通常會在晚些時候共進晚餐。在一次晚宴上，亨利用他那深沉的聲音對我說：“你和我有一個重要的戰略思想，很少有人認同。布熱津斯基也認同這一點——我們三個人都認同。那就是印度永遠不會成為東亞體係的一部分。”亨利這麽說過，我一直都相信這一點。我認為，如果中國在印度洋上遠離印度，你就不會在南海看到任何印度海軍活動或軍事活動。換句話說，認為美國人和莫裏森之類的人可以在其周圍建立某種防禦結構的想法是一派胡言。我隻想說……你提到了……羅裏·梅德卡夫。我在這裏引用了這句話。我在《澳大利亞人報》上找到了這句話。梅德卡夫說：“印度及其長期利益在於西方。”你認為有哪位印度政客認為他們的利益可能在於西方？印度的利益在於巴基斯坦和中東，在某種程度上，盡管喜馬拉雅山有長城，但印度的利益在於中國人的所作所為。但事實並非如此。他說印度的利益在於西方。梅德卡夫說，說服印度改變這種做法將通過幫助印度改變其國家利益計算來實現。換句話說，我們現在在澳大利亞——有一個所謂的學者，談論我們如何改變印度的國家利益。這個梅德卡夫家夥有一小瓶印度油，它就像農村集市上的蛇油一樣有效。你喝一口印度油，它就能起作用。他是如何獲得《悉尼先驅晨報》、《時代報》和《金融評論報》的專欄版麵的？

澳大利亞國際辯論的不成熟之處在於，像梅德卡夫這樣的普通人……無法理解基本的東西。任何一家報紙的編輯經理都不應該支持這種辯論。如果你經常容忍這種傻瓜……

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我可以回到與美國的聯盟問題上嗎？但更具體一點，是關於主權問題。同樣，一些前美國官員和其他人表示，他們對澳大利亞對其主權的敏感程度感到非常驚訝。但這一切與我們與美國和英國簽署的協議（即 AUKUS）相比如何？它與美國和澳大利亞軍隊不僅日益增強的互操作性相比如何？正如國防部長理查德·馬爾斯現在所說的那樣，這些軍隊的“互換性”也是如此。這一切對我們的行動自由意味著什麽？我們在這個國家是否就這些問題進行了充分的辯論？

保羅·基廷議員：

這一切都是天才莫裏森與美國人秘密進行的。他們一定說：“真是一次政變！”美國人一直在吹噓，我們已經讓澳大利亞擺脫了困境，已經有 40 年了。你看，我所在的內閣建造了柯林斯級潛艇。如果我成功贏得第六次選舉，我會再建造六艘柯林斯級潛艇。

12 號潛艇最終將成為下一代潛艇的第一號。

柯林斯級潛艇是一艘非常成功的潛艇。它在水下聽不到聲音。在與美國人的演習中，我們每次都在擊沉美國潛艇。我不知道人們是否知道這一點，但這是事實。柯林斯級潛艇名聲不好，因為他們的柴油發動機不對。但這不是潛艇的設計——澳大利亞有能力部署自己的潛艇。

這些潛艇的用途是什麽呢？它們是為了保衛澳大利亞而實施海上拒止。

它們的設計目的不是攻擊中國沿海大陸架上的中國核潛艇，而洛杉磯號潛艇的設計目的正是攻擊中國核潛艇。

我們是獵殺者。中國人用潛艇給自己提供了核反應能力。如果一艘潛艇攜帶 12 或 16 枚導彈，那麽它就是一艘穿越中國大陸架淺水區的大船。它可以被識別和摧毀。所以我們正在轉移。當天才莫裏森決定我們應該參與其中時，我確信這是受到安德魯·希勒的慫恿，我得到可靠的消息，但我不確定，希勒在現任工黨政府任職，我希望他們沒有聽從他，據我所知，他是擊沉法國船隻的人，可靠消息。我們已經放棄了用一類有能力的船隻來保衛我們的島嶼大陸的能力，這些船隻不需要在很遠的地方待命，因為任何潛艇都需要在中國沿海待命。因此，當我們簽署
AUKUS 協議時，我們實際上簽署了獵殺潛艇的協議，該潛艇隻有一個目的，那就是擊沉中國潛艇。我們現在參與其中，但我們根本不應該參與其中。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我認為你曾說過，它們的用途是“像中國大陸架上的牧羊犬一樣”。
保羅·基廷先生：
在中國潛艇進入馬裏亞納海溝之前。基本上，我認為我們應該放棄美國核潛艇的提議。當然，英國隻是一個笑話。
去康沃爾尋找我們在亞洲的安全。我的意思是，那是詹姆斯·庫克和亞瑟·菲利普 230 年前離開的地方。我們真的要回到那裏嗎？但我們有莫裏森，超級思想家，帶我們去那裏。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：

另一方麵……

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保羅·基廷議員：

我認為我們應該放棄 AUKUS 協議。我們應該自己建造潛艇。柯林斯的兒子或女兒。或者，正如休·懷特在最近的一篇文章中所寫，以核潛艇的價格，你可以從德國、荷蘭或西班牙購買 25 艘潛艇。換句話說，考慮到我們隻能在海上部署大約四分之一，你更願意擁有 24 艘潛艇，其中 6 艘在海上，還是 8 艘核潛艇，其中 2 艘在海上？而且因為它們是核潛艇，所以如果沒有美國的支持，它們就無法投入使用——如果存在互操作性，就意味著我們的主權、我們的決策和行動自由將被徹底剝奪。任何有自尊心的澳大利亞人都不應該支持以這種方式侵犯我們的主權。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：莫裏森達成這項協議時，工黨反對派隻收到不到 24 小時的通知來考慮這項協議及其影響。你認為他們真的用心在這件事上嗎？
保羅·基廷議員：這項協議本應提供 20 個月的考慮時間。工黨和反對派應該說的是，“謝謝你的簡報，我們會考慮的。我們有 20 個月的時間來考慮。”那天早上，也就是宣布的早上，我很早就聽說了這件事。我發表聲明說我反對它，它會侵犯我們的主權。所以工黨本可以在這一點上注意到我，但他們沒有注意到。我沒有和任何人交談。當然，他們簽署了協議。但這並不意味著他們必須繼續簽署。我在眾議院的第一次演講中談到了第二次世界大戰開始時，澳大利亞沒有軍事工業綜合體，我們應該發展它。我從根本上支持與墨爾本的 Transfield 一起建造柯林斯潛艇和護衛艦。我本來會有 12 艘這樣的潛艇。如果我們遵守 AUKUS 協議，對澳大利亞來說將是一場悲劇。你可以進行 AUKUS 信息交換——這很好——我們一直在與英國人和美國人交換信息。但我們應該放棄洛杉磯級潛艇。

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
然而，在國家安全辯論中，您是否認為現任政府在政治上受到反對黨領袖達頓的阻礙……工黨是否會真正擔心，因為工黨被視為聯盟軟弱、不值得信任。它會重演冷戰時期的噩夢嗎？保羅·基廷：
執政政府應該講述自己的故事。鮑勃·霍克、我本人、加雷斯·埃文斯講述的故事，以及我們在亞洲獨立的故事……我們有能力做所有這些事情。陸克文後來在凱文的東亞峰會上……我與亞太經合組織領導人會議，加雷斯與許多地區外交關係，例如與印度尼西亞的阿裏·阿拉塔斯的關係，我與蘇哈托的關係，我與當時日本兩位首相的關係……我們可以講述我們的故事。我們不必被自由黨的愚蠢故事所困擾。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
故事問題很好地引出了我現在想去的地方。這就是民族認同的問題。現在，回到政府時期，您擔任總理期間，那段時期，澳大利亞在身份認同、民族自信和地區前景等方麵發生了很多問題。您在 1992 年初的一次演講中說，在那十年裏，澳大利亞可以“以前所未有的方式獨立”。當然，在惠特拉姆和弗雷澤的領導下，發生了一些變化，各種裝飾、殖民主義的舊遺物都得到了修改，一些被拋棄了，但我們仍然感覺缺乏那種幾乎從舊帝國時代心理上解脫的感覺。您當時提出的所有這些問題都以一種不同於以往任何一位總理的方式整合在一起，無論是原住民所有權問題，還是走向澳大利亞共和國的問題，還是亞太經合組織領導人會議等等。您提到了與印度尼西亞簽署的條約。鑒於最近我們看到的伊麗莎白二世女王去世的事件，我確實想聽聽您對公眾辯論走向的看法，當然，您會記得，當您擔任總理時，僅在澳大利亞人民是否希望走向共和國的問題上，您的支持率就高達 73%。
您向自由黨提供了這方麵的股份。您明確表示，您將保留參議院的作用，參議院仍將能夠阻止供應。總督的權力不會受到限製，您並沒有提出這一點。霍華德放棄了這一點，並在問題中提出了一種他知道會擊敗它的方式。
保羅·基廷議員：
沒錯，您對曆史的了解是正確的。我認為，如果我們要在後冷戰時代，在東亞找到適當的位置。我們需要在亞洲找到我們的安全，而不是從亞洲，也就是試圖與大國攜手。然後你幾乎抬不起頭來說，“順便說一句，我們的國家元首是英國君主。”我在一次選舉中提出了這個問題，這是 1993 年的政策演講。工黨內部的人……都驚恐地認為我會在選舉中提出這個問題。人們說，哦，好吧，基廷對共和國有看法，基廷對共和國沒有看法，基廷在選舉中提出了一項建議，那就是我們將就這個問題舉行全民公投——你認為澳大利亞應該成為共和國嗎？我們得到了 73% 的支持。因為總理，我——我在那裏爭論共和國的重要性，我總是說，這對我們來說比我們對別人說的更能說明我們自己。但我認為，在冷戰後的世界，特別是在我與印度尼西亞蘇哈托總統以及我每周都保持聯係的所有其他地區領導人建立的新關係中，在發展和運營亞太經合組織領導人會議方麵。與英國女王一起出現對我們來說是個笑話，當然，我對她懷有極大的敬意，但我指的是英國的君主製。與此同時，我們並沒有承認我們對原住民和托雷斯海峽島民所做的事情。除了弗雷澤政府的《北領地土地權利法案》外，原住民事務權力實際上沒有得到任何實質性利用。我認為高等法院對馬博案的裁決是一個真正的機會，可以以某種方式解決土地權問題，並承認我們所做的事情。因此，我發表了講話，承認了過去所犯下的罪行——我說“我們帶來了酒精和疾病，我們犯下了謀殺罪，並從母親身邊奪走了孩子”。
與此同時，盡管我們已經消除了悉尼、墨爾本和所有大都市地區任何殘留的原住民所有權，但澳大利亞大片土地仍可根據原住民所有權法案提出索賠，而原住民所有權法案是我在 1993 年花了八個月時間在議會製定的。換句話說，我想為澳大利亞翻開新的一頁。讓一位澳大利亞人成為我們的國家元首。我們承認了我們對該國原住民所做的一切。我們試圖以原住民所有權土地的形式進行賠償。
並以此作為一種……對該國及其原住民和該地區的善意主旋律。以及該地區的居民。
我認為這是重要的。現在，約翰·霍華德在共和國問題上對國家造成了可怕的傷害。正如你正確指出的那樣，我當時在電話裏和他談過這件事，我想做出改變。總督的權力不會受到限製或寫下來，參議院仍然可以拒絕供應。這是自由黨政府可以采用的模式。但霍華德總是在後視鏡裏開車，總是倒車，而且速度很快，他想保留君主製。所以他提出的問題不是“你想擁有一個澳大利亞共和國嗎”，而是你認為我們應該

會由議會任命總統嗎？他知道這個問題會失敗，而霍華德作為首相甚至沒有辯論這個問題。當然，這件事失敗了。

那麽，我們現在在哪裏？嗯……女王伊麗莎白二世已經去世了。我見過她，告訴她我不會讓她的家人參與其中。我和她關係很好，真的。我想王室會很高興公投通過。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：這是1993年在巴爾莫勒爾宮嗎？
保羅·基廷議員：是的，但現在……看看法國人。法國人為他們的共和國進行了革命。美國人為他們的共和國進行了革命。我們甚至不能從女王伊麗莎白二世手中奪走我們的頭銜，她不想要。（笑）我們不能奪走這個頭銜，即使君主很樂意授予它。事實上，如果澳大利亞國王查理三世不主動把主權交給我們，不放棄君主製對澳大利亞的主權，我一點也不會感到驚訝。
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換句話說，共和黨運動告訴我，你現在應該站在那裏，就此事發表講話。你為什麽要這麽做？我們搞砸了。如果澳大利亞人對自己如此不自豪，如此不自豪，以至於他們很高興由英國君主代表，那麽為什麽像我這樣的人會爭論改變他們對自己的悲慘看法？
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
所以，澳大利亞人未能奪取共和國，他們未能將其作為主權的典範。
保羅·基廷議員：
並非所有澳大利亞人都如此。事情很接近。如果當時的總理能夠正確辯論，它就會成功。澳大利亞最優秀的本能在那場競選中顯而易見，在那些結果中也是如此。但當然，現在有些人……他們頭腦清醒，會相信英國君主能夠代表我們的願望嗎？無論是否多元文化。我們是多元文化的。但僅限於該地區。我們占據著地球上最古老的陸地之一，地球上最古老的大陸，也許擁有地球上最古老的社會。澳大利亞君主真是太可悲了。幾乎不需要爭論。我們有英國君主製，莫裏森和另一個瘋子鮑裏斯·約翰遜一起逃到康沃爾……詹姆斯·柯倫教授：澳大利亞國王查理三世並沒有真正吸引你。保羅·基廷議員：澳大利亞國王查理三世是憲法上的異常。就是這樣。詹姆斯·柯倫教授：我可以問最後一個問題，也許可以把這一切聯係在一起嗎？在您第一次擔任總理時，您在一次采訪中說：“總理職位代表著國家的理想和抱負”。您認為，澳大利亞現在應該努力實現的理想是什麽？這個國家的抱負又在哪裏？

保羅·基廷議員：我認為澳大利亞現在對自己的認識很差。它的國家元首是另一個國家的君主。它的戰略主權被外包給另一個國家——一個北大西洋國家，美國。它不知道它是什麽，也不知道它應該是什麽。然而，這片大陸的遺產和禮物是如此偉大的禮物。看看我們與中國之間的這些問題——中國從悉尼飛到澳大利亞要 13 個小時。我們在這裏給自己製造問題。
我隻想說，我們如此不加批判地與亞洲其他國家捆綁在一起，其問題在於美國不知道自己在亞洲該做什麽，一點也不知道。沒有連貫的計劃。看看發生了什麽。作為這方麵的跡象。

我們讓奧巴馬總統談論了轉向。沒有任何結果。他在東京發表了關於釣魚島的重要講話——釣魚島是日本的一部分。它屬於美日協議的條款。我們對此有何看法？中國現在擁有一支強大的海軍。如果我們想跟在美國後麵，他們的政策是什麽？他們在亞洲的戰略是什麽？

詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我們已經看到拜登總統至少四次幾乎消除了戰略模糊性——似乎每次都被收回了。如果真的存在台灣衝突，你能看到澳大利亞政府（無論政治派別）會說不的例子嗎？

保羅·基廷議員：
如果我是總理，我肯定會說不。我再說一遍，台灣不是澳大利亞的重大利益。我們對台灣的政治製度的興趣不應該超過對越南或哈薩克斯坦政治製度的興趣。我們為什麽要感興趣？記住，台灣的民主始於 1996 年，不是 1906 年，而是 1996 年。當李登輝決定，哦，看看我們應該舉行一係列市政選舉時。他說，我們不能讓國民黨成為唯一的政黨，讓我們有幾個多黨派，以及一係列市政選舉，看看誰來管理這個國家。而對於那些市政選舉，我們有第三次世界大戰，這是提議嗎？對於台灣，對於它的市政選舉，我們有第三次世界大戰？對於美國人，如果我有什麽建議給他們，那就是堅持戰略

模糊性就像膠水一樣。諾曼底之所以成為可能，是因為距離諾曼底 21 英裏的地方是一個工業國家，英國。沒有雷達，沒有衛星。在惡劣天氣的掩護下，盟軍能夠在諾曼底的奧馬哈海灘登陸。

台灣 21 英裏範圍內沒有西方國家。事實上，中國距離台灣 90 英裏。因此，中國會看到每艘駛向台灣的兩棲艦艇，無論是從關島，還是從聖地亞哥或檀香山駛來，他們都會看到並擊沉它們。所以在我看來，美國戰勝台灣的機會為零。

我們為什麽希望成為失敗的一部分？我們為什麽要這樣做？最後，美國人最終離開了東亞。我們被拋在後麵。我們不能在布魯姆給澳大利亞裝上舷外馬達，啟動馬達，把大陸移到聖地亞哥——我們被困在這裏，而美國人則回到太平洋的大陸。我們生活在一個華人世界，這就是事實。詹姆斯·柯倫教授：這是問題的一部分嗎——我們如此緊密地依賴美國的政策，以至於如果美國政策突然改變，我們之前已經看到過這種情況，不管在目前的情況下，在華盛頓達成的共識下，這看起來多麽不可能，澳大利亞都會像石頭上的毛一樣被拋棄嗎？保羅·基廷議員：例如，如果台灣問題爆發戰爭，對日本和韓國的保證就會失去可信度，那麽美國可能會一走了之。問題是我們不能一走了之，我們被困在這裏。這就是為什麽執行這種政策是如此愚蠢。正如我們在 80 年代和 90 年代所展示的那樣，我們可以對中國實施非常明智的政策，但對該地區，對印度尼西亞，也是如此。我們的衣食父母依賴印度尼西亞群島。東南亞對我們來說很重要。在一次電視采訪中，我打了蹺蹺板的比喻。公園裏的蹺蹺板。如果你認為蹺蹺板上西方和東方的運動是問題，那麽在東方有日本和中國，在西方有印度和巴基斯坦，但在中心，在中心焦點，在支點，即印度尼西亞和東南亞，我們沒有這些風險。所以，我們應該集中精力——我的意思是，理想情況下，我認為我們是東盟的一員。我與蘇哈托總統達成的協議中，有澳新美安全條約的字眼，實際上是維護安全的協議，約翰·霍華德因慶祝科斯格羅夫將軍而失去了這份協議。當他在墨爾本和悉尼舉行盛大的遊行，把科斯格羅夫帶回來時，印尼總統哈比比說，你代表的是聯合國代表團，但你卻表現得像一支勝利的入侵部隊，所以我暫停了基廷與蘇哈托達成的協議。協議本質上是……如果印尼遭到襲擊，我們會認為這是對我們的襲擊。在印尼，對我們的襲擊或多或少會被視為對他們的襲擊。這意味著我們或多或少有一個共同防禦協定——當然，這需要對話——但這是一個共同防禦協定。作為工黨總理，我與世界上最大的穆斯林國家、不結盟運動的領導人達成了一項澳新美安全條約的防禦協定。你能想象自由黨有人會做這樣的事嗎？你能想象他們中的任何一個人嗎？
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：我想你說它就像一道橫跨全國的鋼圈圍欄。
保羅·基廷議員：我們仍然在群島上吃著黃油。想象一下，如果我們在過去 20 多年裏一直在該協議的合作下工作，而不是把時間浪費在伊拉克、阿富汗、四方安全對話、美國對中國的希望等無稽之談上。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：所以，澳大利亞新政府，隻是為了把這件事聯係起來，新政府已經開始改變語氣，談論穩定與中國的關係。它拋棄了莫裏森政府的詞匯，無論是“戰鼓”還是其他。它談論的是原住民的外交政策；它闡明了對東盟中心地位的承諾。這是否讓您對……更加樂觀了一點
21
保羅·基廷議員：
隻有這一點。語氣必須變成實質。語氣是一回事，實質是另一回事。
我希望政府在這方麵做得很好，時間會證明一切。至少這不是斯科特·莫裏森實施的令人震驚的政策。
詹姆斯·柯倫教授：
我想我們就到此為止了。感謝保羅·基廷抽出時間。我們在那裏討論了很多領域。我們知道，曆史如果重演，它不會完全重演，但
當然，對曆史的更多了解可以幫助我們澄清論點並啟發判斷，讓我們希望如此。非常感謝你今晚的發言。
保羅·基廷議員：
非常感謝您進行富有洞察力的討論。

AUSTRALIA AND CHINA: A CONVERSATION WITH PAUL KEATING

12 October 2022
La Trobe University, Sydney Campus
Level 1, 255 Elizabeth Street, Sydney

Speakers:

Professor Susan Dodds, Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Industry
Engagement), La Trobe University

The Honourable Paul Keating, 24th Prime Minister of Australia
Professor James Curran, Professor of Modern History, University of Sydney

Transcript

PROF SUSAN DODDS:
Hello, I'm Professor Susan Dodds and I'm the Senior Vice Chancellor for Research at La Trobe University. I'm delighted to be here tonight in Sydney for tonight's Ideas & Society event - Australia and China: A Conversation with Paul Keating. I would like to acknowledge that the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation are Traditional Custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, La Trobe Sydney campus. And I pay my respects to the Elders past and present.

Welcome to the fourth event in this year’s Ideas & Society program. The 13th year that Emeritus Professor Robert Manne, La Trobe University’s Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, has presented Ideas & Society. Ideas & Society brings together eminent Australians to consider the big issues facing our nation and the world. This year's previous events have
examined Russia's war on Ukraine, the crisis in Australia's aged care homes and
Australia's handling of the COVID 19 pandemic.

After tonight’s discussion, the next event in the series is on 25 October, where Tim
Flannery will talk with Ross Garnaut about his new book, The Superpower Transformation:
Making Australia's Zero Carbon Future which incidentally is published by La Trobe
University Press. You can register via the La Trobe website. The final event of the year in November will be a discussion on the role of the Greens and Teal independents in the
newly elected federal parliament, moderated by Cathy McGowan, another La Trobe
University’s Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow; with Adam Bandt and Max Chandler-Mather of the
Greens; Zoe Daniel, Teal independent and Simon Holmes à Court, the founder of the
climate initiative that supported the election of several Teals to the House of
Representatives.

Now to tonight's event, the topic and our speakers barely need any introduction. There’s 
been a huge interest in this event, in fact we’ve had well over 3500 registrations, which is one of the most popular discussions the University has ever held. Australia's location in Oceania, between the Indian and Pacific oceans, means we should not, and cannot ignore
the forces at play in our region, especially those fundamental to our future. China's rise as a military and economic power is one such factor. We also find ourselves caught up in the deterioration of diplomatic relations between China and the United States.
If anything, problems only escalated during the pandemic, with trade embargoes,
accusations of espionage on both sides, and new tensions related to Taiwan and Xinjiang.
There is presently the threat of a ‘new cold war’ between these two powers, and it is
apparent that relations are unlikely to improve much under President Biden. What does
this mean for our region? For our trade and security? How does this affect human rights
considerations, or the global fight against climate change? After the AUKUS Treaty was
created by the Morrison government, how much will Australia's approach to China
change under Albanese? And what does our response to China mean for our relationship
with the United States?

Moreover, what is the policy dynamic between Washington, Beijing and Canberra? We
are delighted that the former Australian Prime Minister, with deep experience and
expertise, is here to consider these and other questions, with one of the nation's most
astute historians and foreign affair commentators. It's my honour to introduce our
distinguished guest – the honourable Paul Keating served as Australia’s 24th Prime
Minister from 1991 to 1996 and was Treasurer of Australia from 1983 to 1991. His
political legacy includes fundamental economic and social reforms including deregulation
of Australia's financial, product and labour markets, establishment of Australia's
compulsory superannuation system, Native Title legislation and the formation of the
APEC leaders meeting. Mr Keating's books include Engagement: Australia faces the Asia
Pacific which was published in 2000 and was translated into Chinese and Japanese, and a
collection of post-Prime Ministerial speeches, Afterwords. Mr Keating continues to
contribute to public debate on Australian and international economic issues, geopolitics,
foreign policy and security and superannuation. He specialises on the geostrategic
settings of East Asia.

And Professor James Curran is Professor of Modern History at Sydney University and a
foreign affairs columnist for the Australian Financial Review. He has written policy paper analyses for the Lowy Institute and China Matters. James served as the Keith Cameron Chair at University College Dublin and was a Fulbright scholar at Georgetown University.

Prior to becoming an academic, he worked in the Department of Prime Minister and
Cabinet and as an intelligence analyst at the Office of National Assessments. James has
published a number of books on Australian political culture and foreign affairs. His book,Australia’s China Odyssey: From Euphoria to Fear, is published by New South Wales
Books. I am very pleased to hand over to James, to get the discussion underway. Thank
you.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

Thanks very much Professor Dodds. I would also like to extend my thanks and gratitude to 
Emeritus Professor Robert Manne, convenor of the Ideas & Society program at La Trobe
University, and can I thank all of you who are in Australia and indeed around the world,
who have tuned in tonight to this discussion to listen with Paul Keating.

I think the debate with China and Australia’s foreign policy has tended to be overly
presentist. There are of course, understandable reasons for this, but one of the problems
with that is that historical and contextual ballast is often sacrificed. Mr Keating and I have agreed in a pre-event discussion that this conversation should be about the tectonic
forces of history that move beneath the surface of political events. And that we are about trying to discern the underlying patterns of international affairs, rather than picking at disconnected shards.

Now, a few years ago, former US national security advisor and secretary of state Henry
Kissinger said that he was concerned that today's leaders no longer have the time to think historically. He worried that the current crop of politicians is struggling he said, “to develop a perception of the world and of themselves”. Kissinger went on to say, and I quote him, "We should deepen the current cognitive exercise to a level that is more
compatible with conceptual thinking, and less geared to the immediate emotion."
That's what we are about tonight in this discussion which is about to follow. Paul Keating is a leader, and I don't think it needs any elaboration, who bought to office certain ideas about the world. Ideas which were grounded in view of history and the role of leaders in history, and which drew on a lifetime of thinking about the interplay of identity and culture. Paul Keating, thanks for making the time.

HON PAUL KEATING:

Thank you James, very glad to be here. 

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

With that introduction in mind, and our purpose here, I want to take you back 80 years
ago this year. The fall of Singapore, 1942. You were born two years later, in 1944, and the following year your uncle Billy died on the Sandakan-Ranau Death March. You’ve said
consistently throughout your career that the Second World War “dragged us into Asia”
and that as a result, there should have been no utterly dependent enmeshment with
great and powerful friends, as there had been before. The strategic alignment with Britain to that point had clearly broken down.

As you have pointed out on many occasions – and I quote you – “we were alone and
palely loitering” in this part of the world. How many times do we want to be shown this
lesson about the folly of dependence?

HON PAUL KEATING:

Well, I should’ve thought that having been shown once and importantly in 1942-1945, we
wouldn't have to learn it again, that a society which has inherited a continent, and I used to say in my cabinet, when they were giving out continents, not many people got one. We have no border with another state. We have a continent and therefore our capacity to 
lead decent life here, to maintain the safety of our citizenry, to be able to reasonably
defend the country if we need to, are all things that we are entirely capable of. If you look at our recent experience in the 1980s and 90s, it is clear that we were able to do that.

That is not to say that we told friends we don't need them anymore, like the United
States for instance, or we don't appreciate them. But the problem of enmeshment,
geostrategic enmeshment, means that you compromise your foreign policy action and
you outsource it to another state. That is what the enmeshment does.
Whereas for instance, the last thing I did as prime minister, I entered into essentially a mutual defence pact with Indonesia. This is the Treaty on Maintaining Security that I
entered into with President Suharto. 20 million of us, reasonably technically smart, 250
million of them. Between the two of us, really, able to resist any regional pressure, if you like.

In other words, left to ourselves, we can do these things. I put together the APEC leaders meeting from a cold start, with George Herbert Bush, Gareth Evans put together the Cambodian Peace Accords and the Chemical Weapons Convention. We were able to do
these things and build our submarines. Kim Beazley and I were the moving force behind
the Collins Class submarines. The key is, if you own a continent, the need is to keep other people’s feet from it.

You want sea denial capability, and we are able to do our own sea denial capability, run
an intelligent foreign policy, without being owned by the United States or anyone else. It's not intelligent to be owned.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

No, that's right. I want to take you back then 30 years ago to 1992. You mention some of the things you initiated as Prime Minister. In early 1992, you were a brand-new Australian prime minister and had just taken over from Bob Hawke in December 1991. You are coming to office at a period, towards the end of the 20th century, when a great epiphany has just taken place in terms of the geopolitical structure at the time: the end of the Cold War, and the Soviet Union is wrapping up.

An opportunity is presented at that time to leaders such as yourself and of course, the
president of the United States, for wise and prudent statecraft. How did you see the
opportunity at that point? And how did it relate to a particular view of history that you
brought with you to office, that you had been thinking about really since you were a
young man, with some of the books that you had been reading: about leaders like
Churchill and Roosevelt, that had captured your imagination and propelled you into
political life.

HON PAUL KEATING:

Well, Mikhail Gorbachev let the Soviet Union down carefully, and President George 
Herbert Bush, along with people like James Baker, studiously and unboastfully let those
pieces fall away from what was the Soviet Union. And this happened - Gorbachev signed
the document I think five days after I became prime minister. And five days after that, I
have an American president at Kirribilli House in Sydney.

You can see there was a massive opportunity for open regionalism. That is, with the
bipolarity of the Cold War switched off. With the electricity turned off, with the states in the old Comecon group drifting away. States within the Soviet Union declaring
independence. There was a chance for open regionalism.

If you look around this part of the world, where we could include say China, Vietnam, into the community of nations here, it was with that in mind, that I suggested to George
Herbert Bush and General Brent Scowcroft who was with him at the time as National
Security Advisor, that this was a chance to get the United States more strategically
engaged in Asia, and at Presidential level, not Secretary of State, or Treasury Secretary
level, which was what the first blush of APEC was about. But by bringing the authority of
the presidency there, with someone in the White House every year and every week
worrying about East Asia and in the Pacific.

And I thought that’s what we could put together. Bilateral meetings with the Chinese
were held every decade or so; you know, the Nixon/Mao type meetings; and with the rise
of China coming, and also, with the Cold War finished, the status of a country like
Indonesia. The leader of the non-aligned movement with Japan, which is always loitering
in Asia and with China nearby. There’s a chance, I thought, to bring that together. And
Brent Scowcroft said to me at the meeting, "Prime Minister, you’re articulating a policy
for the United States and Asia we have not articulated for ourselves.” And that was the
truth of it, I thought we had this post-Cold War opportunity, but I thought that extended
beyond just the regional opportunity which I saw.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

Well indeed you said in that meeting, you said that the President, and this is directly to President George H W Bush, “the President now had scope to exercise international
leadership in a way that hasn’t been precedented since 1914; Russia, other former Soviet
republics, the countries of central and eastern Europe, China and Mexico were all trying
to enter the world market against this background. It was crucial to put into place
institutions as influential as Britain's post-World War II Bretton Woods arrangements”.
This is getting back to, is it not, that Rooseveltian view of the world that gripped you -, was this another chance for liberal internationalism to flourish in the world system?

HON PAUL KEATING:

I’ve always been… I don’t have heroes, but the two that have come nearest are Roosevelt
and Churchill. Churchill was a 19th-century politician, Roosevelt a 20th-century one, but
they both had that greatness about them. American Liberal internationalism which we
hear so much of really only lasted 30 years. It lasted from about 1915 to 1945, with the
death of Franklin Roosevelt. It was Woodrow Wilson, and the first World War, and
Franklin Roosevelt with the second World War. Both believed in inclusion. Woodrow 
Wilson's League of Nations. Franklin Roosevelt's United Nations. They saw at the end of
the conflagration of the First World War and the conflagration of the Second World War
the opportunity to have a more representative of structure of world power, that is a
multipolar world. Not one just run by the victors of 1945 but a multipolar world.
And of course Roosevelt died before he could see that dream come true. The problem
with the UN dream for him was Stalin. As George Kennan remarked, Stalin had an
ideological view. You see the Soviet Union was an ideological state which was looking to
world domination. But take that Soviet thought out and look at Roosevelt's instincts. His
instincts were for a multipolar world, which was truly representative, and with it, of
course, the end of colonialism.

So on the battleship, was it Missouri? Churchill wanted to hang on to India and Roosevelt
said, "No more of the British in India, no more of the Dutch in Indonesia, no more French
in Indochina". He wanted to see people be free, he wanted to turn his back on
colonialism, and he wanted representative power to be represented. That's what went
missing at the end of the Cold War. That was the failure of Bill Clinton, the failure of
George W Bush, and the failure of Barack Obama and Trump.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

This is a failure of the United States to find and provide a place for China, India, Russia, in a truly representative international structure, right? You would argue that instead what we got was a post-Cold War confusion, would that be right?

HON PAUL KEATING:

The idea that you can have a unipolar world. That is some end of history. The end of
history did not last long. That was the point. Look, I was saying a long time ago, from
about 1997, I attacked the extension of NATO in 1997, trying to ring fence the old Russia, the former Soviet Union, biting off bits of the pie crust; you can see where that has got us.

I was talking about a representative structure then. And I was urging Bill Clinton then to find a place for China then. And of course, China strategically and economically, was
nowhere much in 1996, 1997. But it has always been my view, you will never have an
operative, peaceful world, while ever we have a G7 structure... Look at the G7. You've
got Italy and Canada sitting up there with Britain and on the other side of the world is
China with a bigger GDP than the United States but it's not in there.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

It's very interesting that as the Berlin wall fell, it was clearly a sense within the American administration at the time that this was not the opportunity to dance on the grave of Soviet communism but by January 1992, when H.W. Bush gives his state of the union address, he’s saying “by the grace of god America won the Cold War”. They have this
sense of American celebration.

HON PAUL KEATING:

Basically, At the very moment, I said to Bill Clinton in one conversation, "You guys are
going to work out how you sit at the top table, at the top of the top table in 40 years from now", and to America they were sort of saying “What do you mean, we’re always on the
top table”, And that was trying to say, "There will be other powers in the world and an
obvious one is still Russia, having nuclear weapons, and of course, China.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

In our preliminary discussion about tonight’s event, you made the point... You said we
had two world wars to settle the status of Germany in Europe. You recalled that at the
point of German unification in 1871, the Kaiser was crowned at the Palace of Versailles
with British, Russian, and French diplomats presumably cooling their heels on the gravel
there and saying, "What are we going to do with this German upstart?" Now, we’ve got a
new upstart with China. What does this lesson tell us? Have we got to have another
global war to settle the status of China?

HON PAUL KEATING:

Well it’s true we had two world wars to settle the status of Germany. You can have these
conflagrations but in the end, there is a settlement to be had after. Why not have the
settlement before the conflagration. You would have thought, even the Nazis, when they
saw their country wiped out by the carpet bombing by the US and Britain, that they
would have said, "We'd better do a trade now". So you know, that's the thing.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

This is the policy of what you call “exasperated vengeance”. The carpet bombing.

HON PAUL KEATING:

That’s what it was. An exasperated vengeance... I think that the big challenges, really, to US and China… I had views… I had views that are shared and enjoyed by others. Zbigniew
Brzezinski was one other. Brzezinski was the ultimate Cold War warrior. He was a
teenager when Hitler and Stalin split Poland. He became an American citizen. He became
chief US strategic adviser to President Jimmy Carter. He was left basically to do the Nixon Mao Accord. Brzezinski was the person who had to put it into place. I’ve kept some things he said in 2012. Let me read them.

“In the United States, the central challenge of the next several decades will be to
revitalise itself while promoting a larger West and accommodating China's rising global
status." You notice, ‘accommodating’, not competing; accommodating. He talks about a
larger west which includes Russia and Turkey. A bigger west. And then he talks about
Asia, that the United States should be the regional balancer and conciliator. The US is the guarantor in the Atlantic, but the balancing power in the East. Not the guarantor in the East, not the hierarchical power; but the balancing power He does go on to say, "The US should respect... Can and should help Asian states avoid a struggle for regional domination while mediating conflicts and offsetting power imbalances between potential rivals. The US should respect China's special historic and geopolitical role in maintaining stability on the far eastern mainland."

Repeat: “The US should respect China's special historic and geopolitical role in 
maintaining stability on the far eastern mainland. He goes on to say, "The US must also
recognise stability in Asia can no longer be imposed by non-Asian power, least of all by
the direct application of US military power." What he is postulating here... is saying what I've always believed, that the balancing power, the stabilising power in Asia is China. It's not Japan. Japan has already had a go at the rest of us. You know, the Second World War… the Russo-Japan War. It is unlikely to be doing it these days with a diminishing population. But in this period, China was not attacking anyone.
China is attacking nobody. They live in that bowl - they've got Siberia and Mongolia to the north and the Himalayas to the east. They've got Indochina to the south, and they have the Pacific Ocean to the east. They do not attack other states. So Brzezinski says, "The US should respect China's special historic and geopolitical role." How do you respect their role? Given the fact that China's GDP on a purchasing power parity basis is now 20% larger than the United States - is a country larger than the US in GDP. It's got a big navy.You've got 20% of humanity.

Extrapolating, Brzezinski’s point is that the US could run the world co-operatively with
China. In other words, the US consolidates the Atlantic, a phrase I’ve used over and over
in speeches, the US consolidates the Atlantic, which includes bringing Russia into Europe,and in the East, stability is provided by the Chinese. But still with the US present as a balancing power.

And that model would, I think, be advantageous for the whole world, because the
Chinese are not trying to overturn the existing system. Let's get this clear. China is not the old Soviet Union. It's not exporting an ideology. It's part of the existing arrangements in the West. It's in the WTO, the WHO, the IMF, the World Bank, it wants to join the TPP and its President was in Davos a couple of years ago arguing for globalisation. It doesn't want to up end the existing system.

But it doesn't want to be - as big and important as it is, a “responsible stakeholder”, to use the Bob Zoellick expression in a system, a proprietary system run by the United
States. And frankly, with an economy this large and 20% of humanity, why should it? And
why would it? The idea that you can have the G7 with Italy and Canada and Britain and
flag wavers like Australia on the side and say, "We can sort of...run the world..."
I spoke to the foreign affairs and defences secretaries in Canberra in 2011. I said at the time, above all, for the US to not see China's as a strategic challenger and a full counter force... In other words, to see China's rise as simply the orderly development of the world structure. We don't want a repeat of 1892 when Russia and France enter into an entente to balance out Germany or when Britain joined it in 1904.
Once you have bipolarities and rigidities, the death of the Crown Prince in Sarajevo, blows the whole thing up. Every moment is magnified in a bipolar structure.

I thought … you see... A decade ago there was a discussion about the G2. And the G1 was
of course the United States, the G2 was China. In other words, you needed to understand
the subtleties. The G2 was a subordinate role. But the Chinese are not going to be G2
anymore, what the Chinese want is a G1 and G1, with a state which is not attacking other
people, which is a major contributor to the world economy and a major force for keeping
down inflation for 25 years while lifting 20% of humanity out of poverty. Is it beyond the wit of let's say the United States to come to a multipolar solution here?

I might say, such a solution includes states like India. Which I have argued… and
Indonesia. But this idea that the United States is the exceptional power, and as the
proselytiser of democracy, it has God's ear and the rest have got to follow along. That wasfine in the 20th century. The 20th century was the century of the United States. The 21st century is not the century of the United States.

PROF JAMES CURRAN:

I wanted to just pick up on that if I could. You made the key point about why we can't
have a settlement before the conflict. The question is, you’ve already started to discuss it,– are the Americans up for it? That is, when we are in a situation where this bipolarity is already fairly deeply entrenched. Where there is a strong bipartisan consensus in Washington on either strategic competition or a new Cold War. Where even the thought of America reaching an accommodation with China, or even a modus vivendi is, more or less, quickly depicted as appeasement or let’s throw the Munich myth all over it.
This is something that America can do? Give up its idea of primacy?

HON PAUL KEATING:

If it was led properly yes. James, China's ambitions are in the West, not the East. There is a great confusion with countries like US and Australia, that it's all about the East and the South China Sea. That’s the Chinese front door mat. They just don't want anyone else with Taiwan on their coast. What they’re really interested in is the ‘‘Stan’ countries. That is, central Asia. And as a result of the Belt and Road initiative, I think you could say, without building the argument, that everywhere between Wuhan and Istanbul, in the next 30 years, will have huge Chinese influence. They have already built a port for those 'Stan countries – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, at Gwadar on the western side of Pakistan.

These little states were forever lost to the old Soviet Union.

Now under that plan, the Chinese plan, they have access to the Bay of Biscay and Baltic by way of Gdańsk. You will see the Germans and the French come on. The Chinese have
always been worrying about the Straits of Malacca and how they get goods and material
by land, across the great steppes of Asia, into China.
And the Belt and Road will basically up for doing that. If you look at the capacity of China to grow. The other point to be made is this – the urban societies of the kind we live in, are about 80 to 90% urbanised. That’s the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Australia…

China has about 60%. It has a lot of growth to go at home, at home. And it has the growth
through central Asia.
So, you wouldn't need to be a demographer or a statistician to work out that in 25 or 30 
10
years, if the Chinese economy is already 20% larger in GDP, according to the IMF, than the
United States, where will it be? And what is the profit in the US not coming to terms with
that mathematics? That is the reality.
So, the idea that we can ring fence China, on the basis that it is kind of illegitimate. It is
not attacking anyone, but still it is illegitimate. It's a piece of strategic nonsense. And a
good mind, and open-minded, creative American president could still develop a
multipolar structure.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
I wonder if this is a question that Australian strategists and foreign policy thinkers have a
certain difficulty in facing up to. An America that may well stop believing in itself. This is a
very different America that Australians would not be used to. You saw the reaction when
Trump was elected, and Trump was not a believer in American exceptionalism I mean he
didn’t believe in the rules-based order, he didn’t believe in alliances.
HON PAUL KEATING:
There is no rule-based order. Walking into Iraq, what rule was that under? Or
Afghanistan, what rule was that under?
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Can we just move on to the US alliance actually, the US Australia alliance, and talk about
that in a little bit more detail go back to some of that history as well, when you were in
government, and even before you were in government. I just want to open it by
mentioning a quote from a recent interview that I did with the CEO of the US Studies
Centre Michael Green, who mentioned you along with Hugh White and Bob Carr as being
“those who openly questioned the alliance”, and he said that you were apparently “taking
China's case to the Australian people in criticising the United States”.
And he added, he said, "this is not a good look and it did make people a bit nervous in the
Obama Administration and at the beginning of the Trump administration." Paul Keating,
can I ask what your responses is to that appraisal?
HON PAUL KEATING:
Well, the United States and the people who represent them these days, they are not
interested in thinking allies. They basically have an open book for sycophants not thinking
allies. In my own case, I made a few points here.
The US is exceptionally ungrateful for people who have stuck to it for a lifetime. I am one
of them. For two decades within the Labor Party, I supported the United States alliance
against what was then the pro-Communist Left, the soft pro-Comm Left.
While John Howard would be at the Church of England Sunday school bazaars, I was
fighting the Communists at the Town Hall. This was the real battle. When I went with Bob
Hawke, he invited me to meet President Reagan on the first trip… Bob had been
supported by the left all his life, and he wanted to have certain qualifications with the US. 
11
I said, “Look, if I were you Bob, I would positively embrace President Reagan as a jolly sort
of a guy and your friend George Shultz in a post ’83 relationship.” Particularly with the
problems with the Whitlam Government in the ‘70s, so fresh in their mind.
The problem that Whitlam had with Nixon. And I said, "Bob, this is the black-and-white
brigade. They are not interested in greys. Let’s embrace them enthusiastically and let’s
get on with it.” I’m not saying that I was the sole person who was influential on Bob, but I
was a big influence on him.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
That is when Bob said – we are “together forever”, Australia and the United States.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Ron was a great host, I’ll say that. And the first policy commitment after the Cold War
was when the United Nations, supported by the United States under the presidency of
George Herbert Bush, decided to resist Iraq and Saddam Hussein in his attack on Kuwait
which was called Desert Shield.
I am Deputy Prime Minister at this stage, I get called by Bob Hawke to a meeting. Bob
says, "The President is going to call and wants to know what our position on Kuwait is
going to be." I said, "Bob, what about your mate, [Brian] Mulroney in Canada, you tell me
what a good fellow he is, what about John Major in Britain? They are members of NATO,
what are they doing? Why would we be the first to put our hand up?”
And Bob said, "It wouldn't be good… you know." That is, to volunteer. So I sat through
this meeting. I controlled the right of the party. I wasn't just Deputy Prime Minister. I said
that if this was the first action by the United Nations after the Cold War and the US wants
to support that commitment, I'm for doing it. But I said, "If your mates Mulroney and
Major are dragging the chain, let's get in early but at a low price."
We already have a tanker in the Gulf and we can put a Destroyer at the top of the Gulf.
And Bob said “okay”. But I said Bob, no combat troops, no aircraft. And he said “no no,
that’s okay” and he pressed a button and the waiter came in and we all had a cup of tea.
And the decision was taken. How many thanks today do we get from the United States
from that? Zero thanks.
And then when I saw you mentioned George Herbert Bush and putting the APEC leaders
meeting together... The US was a Eurocentric show. It had no Asia policy, no Pacific policy.
It was always run by the Navy. Pacific policy was run out of Honolulu. There was no State
Department involved. I came along as Australian Prime Minister I said “what about the
Pacific?” I take it on, with George Herbert's agreement. George Bush said, “if we do it, it
will blow up”. Paul, he said “you do it”. I talked to the Japanese Prime Minister, President
Suharto and the Prime Minister of Thailand, the Prime Minister of Singapore, the Prime
Minister of Canada and the President of China.
Over a period of time, I put together a consensus for the APEC Leaders meeting. George 
12
Herbert Bush loses the election, and Bill Clinton gets the thing. I offered to Bill Clinton the
arrangements I’d already put together. He said to me, "Look, I won the election against
George Bush on a platform of ‘it’s the economy stupid” and I did not want to be in foreign
affairs escapades like Kuwait."
What you are asking me to do is to go into essentially a strategic body. I tell you what I'll
do – I will be in it, if you make it look like a trade body. And he and I then argy-bargied
that and we decided to meet in Seattle. The home of Boeing and Microsoft to look like it
was about jobs across the Pacific. But you and I both know when the American President
sits down with the President of China, the Prime Minister of Japan, the President of
Indonesia. At a leadership level, it is of course a strategic meeting. This came out of
Australian foreign policy – this was my personal gift to the United States. for which they
will give you no thanks or gratitude.
That is why I don't take much notice of them.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Are you surprised of the sensitivity on the American side to this kind of criticism?
HON PAUL KEATING:
They want dummies… as interlocutors, as allies. Let us do the thinking, they say. We have
let them do the thinking and the thinking is not very good. This is the point.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
We will come back to that question, because there’s a lot of more recent developments
on the question of the alliance and the “interchangeability” of the US and Australian
forces that I think is worth picking up. Before we do that, I wanted to ask a question
about the Quad. And the great hopes that have been invested in the Quad over recent
years. Of course, it's been elevated to a leaders meeting now and has met more regularly
in recent years.
Now, one of the issues here of course is that since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we
have had a number of apologias delivered for India's position on that. Now those
apologies, to be fair, were given before India's President Modi gave Vladimir Putin a
public clip over the ear recently. A public rebuke.
This is, of course, at the same time that India is still sending troops to military exercises
with Chinese and Russian forces in Vostok. One of the prominent Quad advocates from
the ANU is Rory Metcalf, he said that at the outset of the Ukrainian crisis, India was taking
“a cold interest-based approach to the plight of Ukraine but in the long-term, its future
lay with the West”. He said that the success of the Quad, and other friends of India in
persuading India to change that approach is “not going to come through some valiant
appeal to values it’s going to come through helping India change its national interest
calculations”. What do you think about that idea that others can change the national
interest calculations of India?
13
HON PAUL KEATING:
This is just amateur hour nonsense. The Quad is a piece of strategic nonsense. India is
important to Australia as the key state in South Asia and the dominator, if you like, of the
Indian Ocean. We should be approaching India on that basis, but not in some sort of
string of pearls idea that we can get together to contain China, which basically is the idea
of the late Prime Minister Abe. The idea that we can string together US and Australia to
sort of resist China using India. Could you imagine a flotilla of Indian naval vessels
entering the Straits of Malacca and exiting into the China Sea to fight the Chinese military
in defence of Western values? US or Australian values. You will never see this, ever. I
should say this to you. Kissinger and I served on this together. We would mostly have a
dinner later. And at one of the dinners, Henry said to me in that deep voice of his, "You
and I share one important strategic idea that few share. That Brzezinski shares – the three
of us share. That India will never be part of the East Asian system." Henry said that and
I’ve always believed that.
I think if China stays away from India in the Indian Ocean, you won't see any Indian naval
activity or military activity in the South China Sea. In other words, the idea that the
Americans and the likes of Morrison can string together some sort of defence structure
around it is a piece of high nonsense.
Let me just say… You mentioned… Rory Medcalf. I’ve got the quote here. I found this in
The Australian. Medcalf says, "India and its long-term interests lay with the West." You
think there is one Indian politician who thinks their interest might lay with the West?
India’s interest lays with Pakistan and the Middle East and to some extent,
notwithstanding the great wall of the Himalayas with what the Chinese are up to. But no.
He says its interest lay in the West. Medcalf says, persuading India to change that
approach is going to come through helping India to change its national interest
calculations. In other words, here we are in Australia – with a so-called academic, talking
about how we can change India's national interests. This fellow Medcalf has got his little
bottle of Indo oil and it works like snake oil at a rural fair. You have a sip of the Indo oil
and it does everything. How does he get column inches in the Sydney Morning Herald,
The Age and the Financial Review?.
The immaturity of the Australian international debate is that people as ordinary as
Medcalf... fail to understand basic things. It should not be supported by editorial
managers in any of the newspapers. If you put up with these sort of fools regularly…
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Can I come back to the question of the alliance with the United States but more
particularly on the question of sovereignty. Again, this is something that some former
American officials and others have said that they are quite surprised by how sensitive
Australia is about its sovereignty. But how does that all stack up with the agreement we
signed with the United States and Britain which is known as AUKUS, how does it stack up
with the increasing not only interoperability of the United States and the Australian forces
but as Defence Minister Richard Marles now calls it the ‘interchangeability’ of those
forces. What does all this mean for our freedom of movement? Have we had a sufficient 
14
debate in this country about those issues?
HON PAUL KEATING:
It was all done secretly by that genius Morrison with the Americans. They must have said,
"What a coup!" Americans have been boasting we’ve now got Australia off the fence for
40 years. Look, the Cabinet I belonged to built the Collins Class Submarine. If I had of
succeeded in winning the sixth poll, I would have built another six Collins Class boats.
Boat number 12 would have ended up being boat number one of the next generation.
The Collins Class boat was a completely successful boat. It could not be heard under the
water. In exercises with the Americans, we were sinking American boats every time. I
don't know if people know that but that is the truth of it. The Collins got a bad name
because they had the wrong diesel engine. But that wasn't the design of the submarine -
Australia had the capacity to field its own submarine.
And what were the submarine's for, they were for sea denial in the defence of Australia.
They were not designed to be picking off Chinese nuclear submarines on the continental
shelf off the Chinese coast which is what those Los Angeles boats are designed to do.
There are hunter-killers. The Chinese give themselves a nuclear response capability by
submarines. If a submarine is carrying 12 or 16 missiles, it is a big boat going across the
shallow waters off the continental shelf of China. It can be identified and destroyed.
So we are shifting. When the genius, Morrison, decided...that we should be in this and
this is I’m sure egged on by, I am told this reliably but I'm not certain of this, by Andrew
Shearer who’s serving in the current Labor Government I hope they’re not listening to
him, he's the one who sunk the French boats from what I understand, reliably told. We’ve
moved away from the capacity to defend our island continent with a class of boats which
are competent at it, that didn't need to have standby capabilities a long way away, as any
submarine would need to have off the coast of China. And so, when we signed up to
AUKUS, what we’ve done is sign up to a hunter-killer submarine which has got one
purpose and that is to sink Chinese submarines. We are party to that now when we
shouldn't be party to it at all.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
I think you said at one point they’re use would be “like sheepdogs along the Chinese
continental shelf”.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Before Chinese submarines get in the Mariana Trench. Basically, I think we should walk
away from the US nuclear submarine proposition. The British, of course, is just a joke.
Going to Cornwall to find our security in Asia. I mean that’s where James Cook and Arthur
Phillip left 230 years earlier. Do we really to go back there? But we had Morrison, the
super thinker, taking us there.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
The flipside of the…
15
HON PAUL KEATING:
I think we should walk away from the AUKUS agreement. We should build the submarines
ourselves. The sons of Collins or the daughters of Collins. Or as Hugh White wrote in a
recent article, for the cost of the nuclear submarines, you could buy 25 submarines from
the Germans or the Dutch or the Spanish. In other words, what would you rather – given
the fact that we can only have about a quarter of them at sea – would you rather have 24
submarines with six at sea or eight nuclear submarines but with two at sea? And because
they’re nuclear submarines, they cannot be fielded without the support of the United
States – if there’s interoperability it means our sovereignty, our freedom of decision and
movement is simply swept away. No self-respecting Australian should ever put their
hand up for our sovereignty being subjugated in this way.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
The Labor Opposition at the time that Morrison made this deal was given less than 24
hours’ notice to consider the deal and its implications. Do you think their heart’s really in
it?
HON PAUL KEATING:
The deal was supposed to provide 20 months of consideration. What the Labor Party and
opposition should have said was, "Thank you for the briefing, we will think about it.
We've got 20 months to think about it." That morning, the morning of the
announcement, I heard about it early. I put out statement saying I was opposed to it and
that it would subjugate our sovereignty. So the Labor Party could have taken notice of me
on this point but they took no notice. I had no conversations with anybody. Of course,
they signed up. But it doesn’t mean they have to stay signed up. And in my first speech at
the House of Representatives, I talked about how at the beginning of the Second World
War, we were left with no military industrial complex in Australia, that we should develop
it. I fundamentally supported the building of the Collins submarines and frigates with
Transfield in Melbourne. I would have had 12 of these. It would be a tragedy for Australia
if we keep to the AUKUS agreement. You can have the AUKUS exchange of information –
that’s fine - we've been exchanging information with the Poms and with the Americans
forever. But we should walk away from the Los Angeles class submarine.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Is the national security debate, though, do you think the current government is politically
wedged by the opposition leader Dutton... Would this be a real concern for Labor as being
seen as weak on the Alliance, untrustworthy. Will it repeat those nightmares from the
Cold War?
HON PAUL KEATING:
Governments in office should make their own stories. The stories that Bob Hawke, myself,
Gareth Evans, the stories we made about our independence in Asia... Our ability to do all
these things. Kevin Rudd later with the Kevin's East Asia Summit... Me with the APEC
Leaders’ Meeting, Gareth with a great lot of regional foreign relations for instance with Ali
Alatas in Indonesia My relationship with Suharto, my relationship with two Prime
Ministers of Japan at the time... We can tell our story. We don't have to be caught with 
16
the Liberal party's dumb story.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
The question of stories provides a nice introduction to where I wanted to go now. And
that is the question of national identity. Now, going back to the period of government
where you were Prime Minister, there is a lot going on in that period about questions of
identity and Australia's national self-confidence and its regional outlook. You said in a
speech in early 1992 that in that decade, Australia could be “independent in ways that it
had never been”. Of course, there had been some changes under Whitlam and Fraser, to
the various trappings, the old relics of colonialism, these had been modified and some
were tossed out, but it was a feeling that still, we were lacking that sense of almost
psychological release from that old imperial era. And that all of these issues that you are
putting forward at the time were integrated in a way that is unlike any previous Prime
Ministership, whether it be Native Title, whether it be the question of moving towards an
Australian Republic, whether it be the APEC leaders meeting and so forth. You mentioned
treaty you signed with Indonesia. Given the recent events we've seen in terms of the
passing of Queen Elizabeth II, I did just want to get your views on where the public debate
is headed and of course, you would recall that when you were Prime Minister, you had a
73% approval rating just on the question about whether Australian people wanted to
move towards being a Republic.
And you offered the Liberal Party a stake in this. You made it clear that you would
maintain the Senate’s role, the Senate would still be able to block supply. The powers of
the Governor General would not be circumscribed, you weren’t proposing that. Howard
walked away from it and put a modality in the question that he knew would defeat it.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Exactly, you have the history right. The thing is that I believe that if we were to, in a postCold War world, take our place appropriately in East Asia. We needed to find our security
in Asia, not from Asia, that is by trying to hold hands with great powers. Then you can
hardly lift your head and say, "By the way, our head of state is the monarch of Great
Britain."
I took this issue on at an election, this was in the policy speech of 1993. I had people in
the Labor Party… with horror, thinking that I would put this at an election. People say oh
well, Keating had views about the Republic, Keating didn’t have views about the Republic,
Keating put a proposal at an election and it was that we would hold a plebiscite around
the question – do you think Australia should become a Republic? Of which we had 73%
support. Because the Prime Minister, me - I was out there arguing the importance of the
Republic, which I always said would say more to us about ourselves than we would ever
say to anybody else.
But I thought in the post-Cold war world, particularly in the new relationship I had
personally invested with President Suharto in Indonesia and all the other regional leaders
I was in touch with weekly, in terms of developing that APEC leaders meeting and
operating it. Turning up with the Queen of Great Britain for whom, of course, I had 
17
enormous respect, but I’m talking about the monarchy of Great Britain, was a joke for us.
At the same time, we didn't own up to the things that we had done to the Aborigines and
Torres Strait Islanders.
Apart from the Northern Territory Land Rights Act under the Fraser governments, there
was really nothing for which the Aboriginal Affairs power was used in any substantial way.
I saw that the High Court decision of Mabo was a real opportunity to settle, in some way,
the question of land rights and own up to what we had done. So I made the reference
speech and to the owning up - I said that “we brought the alcohol and diseases and we
committed the murders and took the children from their mothers”.
At the same time, even though we have wiped out any residual native title in Sydney,
Melbourne and all the metropolitan areas, large tracts of Australia were open to a claim
under the Native Title Act which I spent eight months of 1993 putting into place, in the
Parliament. In other words, I wanted to turn over a new leaf for Australia. Have an
Australian as our head of state. We fessed up about what we had done to the original
inhabitants of the country. We try to make reparations in terms of land with native title.
And use this as a sort of… a leitmotif of goodwill towards the country and its original
inhabitants, and the region. And the inhabitants of the region.

This is what I thought was important. Now, John Howard did the country a dreadful
disservice in this on the Republic. As you correctly say, I spoke to him on the telephone
about this at the time, I wanted to make that change. Where the powers of the Governor
General would not be circumscribed or written down where the Senate could still refuse
supply. It was a model that the Liberal government could have adopted. But Howard,
always driving in the rear-view mirror, always driving backwards and at speed, wanted to
keep the monarchy. So he put the question not of ‘do you want to have an Australian
Republic’, but rather, do you think that we should have a president appointed by the
parliament? He knew that that question would fail, and then as Prime Minister, Howard
didn't even argue that case. Of course, the thing failed.

So, where are we now? Well… Queen Elizabeth II has died. I met her and told her that I
would not involve her family in any of this. I had a great relationship with her, really. I
think the royal family would have been so glad for the referendum to have passed.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
This is at Balmoral in 1993?
HON PAUL KEATING:
Yes, but now… look at the French. The French had a revolution for their Republic. The
Americans had a revolution for their Republic. We could not even pinch ours off Queen
Elizabeth II, who didn't want it. (Laughs) We couldn't take the title, even if the monarch
was happy to give it.
In fact, I wouldn’t be at all be surprised of King Charles III, the King of Australia, doesn't
volunteer to give it to us, to renounce the monarchy’s claim on Australia.
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In other words, the Republican movement say to me that you should be up there right
now, speaking to this. Why would you? We fluffed it. If Australians have so little pride in
themselves, so little pride that they are happy to be represented by the monarch of Great
Britain, why would somebody like me argue to shift their miserable view of themselves?
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
So, Australians have failed to seize the Republic, they’ve failed to claim it as an example of
the sovereignty.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Not all Australians. The thing was close run. If properly argued by the then Prime Minister
it would have succeeded. The best instincts of Australia were visible in that campaign, and
in those results. But of course, you’ve got people now… who in their right mind would
believe that the monarch of Great Britain could represent our aspirations? Whether
multicultural or not. And we are multicultural. But just in the region.
We occupy one of the oldest landmasses on earth, the oldest continent on earth, with
perhaps the oldest society on earth. It is so pathetic, an Australia monarch. It barely
needs an argument. We have the monarchy of Great Britain and there is Morrison
running off to Cornwall with that other fruitcake, Boris Johnson…
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Charles the III, King of Australia doesn’t exactly grab you.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Charles the third, King of Australia, is a constitutional aberration. That’s what it is.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Can I just ask a final question to perhaps tie this all together? In an interview when you
first became Prime Minister, you said, "In the Prime Ministership is vested the ideal of the
nation and its aspirations”. What is the ideal now of this place, Australia, to strive towards
in your view? And where are the aspirations for this country?
HON PAUL KEATING:
I think Australia has a very poor idea of itself now. It's head of state is the monarch of
another country. Its strategic sovereignty is being outsourced to another state - a North
Atlantic state, the United States.
It doesn't know what it is or what it should be. And yet, the inheritance, the gift of the
continent is such a great gift. Look at these issues that we have with China – China’s 13
flying hours from Sydney. Here we are, manufacturing a problem for ourselves.
And I just say that the problem we have in tying ourselves in other states in Asia so
uncritically, is that the United States has no idea what to do with itself in Asia, none. It has
no coherent plan about what to do. Have a look at what has happened. As indications of 
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this.
We had President Obama talking about the pivot. Nothing came of it. He made the big
speech in Tokyo about the Senkaku Islands - a part of Japan. It came under the articles in
the US/Japan agreement. What did we think about that? China now has a big navy. If we
want to be hanging around behind the Americans, what is their policy? What is their
strategy in Asia?
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
We have seen President Biden virtually unpick strategic ambiguity on no fewer than four
occasions – it seems to be walked back every time. Can you see any instance in which an
Australian Government of either political persuasion would say no, if there was in fact a
conflict over Taiwan?
HON PAUL KEATING:
If I were Prime Minister, I would certainly say no. Taiwan, I repeat, is not a vital Australian
interest. We should be no more interested in the political system of Taiwan then the
political system of Vietnam or Kazakhstan. Why should we be interested? Remember
this, Taiwan's democracy started in 1996, not 1906, 1996. When Lee Teng-hui decided,
oh look what we should have is a bunch of municipal elections.
He said, we can't have the KMT as the sole party, let's have some multi parties, and a
bunch of municipal elections to see who would run the place. And for those municipal
elections, we have World War III is that the proposition? For Taiwan, for its municipal
elections, we have World War III?
For the Americans, if I’ve got any advice for them, it’s to stick to strategic ambiguity like
glue. Normandy was possible because 21 miles from Normandy was an industrial state,
Britain. There was no radar, there were no satellites. And under the cover of bad
weather, that allies were able to make the landings at Omaha Beach at Normandy.
There is no Western state within 21 miles of Taiwan. In fact, China is 90 miles from
Taiwan. So China would see every amphibious vessel coming towards Taiwan, whether
it’s from Guam, or whether it’s from San Diego or Honolulu, they would see them and
sink them. So the chances of the Americans having a victory over Taiwan is nil, in my
opinion.
And why would we wish to be part of that defeat? Why would we? In the end, finally the
Americans walk away from East Asia. And we are left behind. We can't put an outboard
motor on Australia at Broome, start the motor and move the continent off to San Diego -
We are stuck here, as the Americans take off back to their continent back in the Pacific.
We live in a Chinese world, that's the truth of it.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
Is that part of the problem – we have mortgaged ourselves so closely to US policy that if
there was for example, if there was a sudden change in US policy, and we’ve seen this 
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happen before, however unlikely it may seem in the current circumstances and with the
kind of consensus in Washington, that Australia could be left like a shag on a rock?
HON PAUL KEATING:
If, for instance, it came to a fight over Taiwan, where the guarantees to Japan and Korea
would fall in credibility and then possibly the US would walk away. The thing is that we
can't walk away, we are stuck here. And that’s why it’s so unintelligent to be running this
sort of a policy. And as we showed in the 80s and 90s, we can run very intelligent policy
with China but also with the region, with Indonesia. Our bread is buttered on the
Indonesian archipelago. It’s South-East Asia that matters to us. In a television interview, I
provided the seesaw analogy.
The park see-saw. If you regard West and East movements in the seesaw as problems
let’s say, in the East with Japan and China, in the West with India and Pakistan but at the
centre, at the central focal point, the fulcrum point that’s Indonesia and South East Asia
we don't have these risks. So, we should be concentrating – I mean ideally, I’d see us as a
member of ASEAN. In the agreement I had with President Suharto with the ANZUS words,
in what was effectively the agreement for maintaining security which John Howard lost
owing to his celebration of General Cosgrove. When he brought Cosgrove back with his
tickertape parade in Melbourne and Sydney, President Habibie of Indonesia said you
were representing a UN mission and yet you’re conducting yourself like some sort of
victorious, invading force, so I’m suspending the agreement that Keating made with
Suharto.
The agreement was essentially... If there was an attack on Indonesia, we would regard it
as an attack on us. An attack on us would be regarded in Indonesia as more or less an
attack on them. That would mean we had, more or less, a mutual defence pact – this
would require conversation, of course – but a mutual defence pact. As a Labor Prime
Minister I put together an ANZUS-worded defence pact with the largest Muslim state in
the world, the leader of the non-aligned movement. Can you imagine anyone in the
Liberal Party doing such a thing? Could you imagine any one of them?
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
I think you said it was like a steel ring fence across the top of the country.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Our bread is still buttered in that archipelago. Imagine if we’d spent the last 20 odd years
working under the cooperation of that agreement Instead of wasting our time on
nonsense like Iraq, Afghanistan, the Quad, American hopefulness about China.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
So the new government of Australia, just to tie this up, the new government has started
of change its tone, it’s talked about stabilising the relationship with China. It’s poured
away the vocabulary of the Morrison government whether it be ‘drums of war’ or so
forth. It's talking about a First Nations foreign policy; it's enunciating its commitment to
ASEAN centrality. Does this give you a bit more optimism about where…
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HON PAUL KEATING:
Only this. Tone has got to become substance. Tone is one thing and substance is another.
I wish the government well in this and time will tell. At least it's not the appalling policy
which was conducted by Scott Morrison.
PROF JAMES CURRAN:
I think we will leave it there. Thank you, Paul Keating for your time. We covered a lot of
territory there. History, as we know it, if it repeats it doesn’t repeat exactly the same, but
certainly a greater knowledge of history can help us clarify the argument and enlighten
the judgement, let’s hope. Thank you very much for that tonight.
HON PAUL KEATING:
Thank you very much for conducting an insightful discussion.