Keating should apologise

Although he has become very bitter in his old age, there is one thing that Paul Keating has not lost, and that is his penchant for purposefully misinterpreting comments by others to suit himself.

In his talk given at La Trobe University on Wednesday 12 October, he proclaimed in Keatingesque style that "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 want to shift their miserable view of themselves."

He also said, wrongly, that he believed the royal family would have been "so glad for the referendum to have passed" and for Australia to break away.

Just because the Queen had stated that the matter of change to a republic was a matter for the Australian people themselves to decide and that she would accept the decision of the Australian people whatever it may be, in no way means that neither she nor any member of the Royal Family would have been “so glad for the referendum to have passed.” To say so demeans Mr Keating himself and the Labor Party in general for propagating fiction to support their push for a republic.

Mr Keating also conveniently forgets that it was his icon, former Labor prime minister, Gough Whitlam, who declared that the Queen in Australia was Queen of Australia.

Mr Keating should apologise both to the King and to the Australian people for these falsehoods.

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