Annette Sharp: A look inside the glamorous world of Paul Keating’s kids
The spotlight shone back on the Keating family this week, with news that former PM Paul’s youngest daughter had hooked up with a Hollywood director best known for having an affair with Kristen Stewart. So what are PK’s children up to these days?
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Their father’s relationship with the media was historically so combative he once called for the rewriting of privacy laws to shield his children from scrutiny.
Yet why wouldn’t the media and a nation who elected him prime minister in 1993 scrutinise the glittering lifestyles of the children of former prime minister Paul Keating and his ex-wife Annita, particularly as they’ve been so drawn to fame?
The Keatings’ two youngest daughters, Katherine and Alexandra, have dominated their share of headlines during the past decade, after swapping their comfortable childhood home in leafy Woollahra for Manhattan.
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It was there that Katherine, or “KK” as her Sydney friends still call her, fell for the former boyfriend of Cameron Diaz, multi-millionaire New York hotelier Andre Balazs.
And it was he who introduced her to Ghislaine Maxwell, the ex-lover of billionaire paedophile rapist Jeffrey Epstein.
The most gregarious, upwardly mobile and celebrity-loving member of the Keating clan, KK began a relationship with the older and richer Balazs in 2009, inspiring her to pack her bags in Sydney — where she had a run-in with a photographer at the State Theatre that same year — and move to New York.
KK was soon lighting up New York and seemed to be everywhere — including, as chance would have it, on the footpath outside Epstein’s Manhattan house in December 2010, where Prince Andrew was a house guest.
There is no suggestion Keating knew of, or had any involvement in, Epstein’s criminal activities.
Successfully parlaying her status as prime ministerial daughter on arts boards, she later found work in 2015 as a TV producer on Viceland.
But the work was short-lived. In 2016 she was contributing editor to The World Post and by 2018 KK was on the move to LA to work for entertainment management company Maverick, which manages Madonna, among others.
Now 39, Katherine has been subdued since her connection to associates of Epstein, Maxwell and Prince Andrew was made public last year, and sources last week pondered if she might soon be ready to return home to Australia.
Not so subdued in recent times has been her baby sister Alexandra, or “AK”, who, as it emerged last week, also managed to nab herself a famous boyfriend while living in New York this past decade.
That boyfriend is British film director Rupert Sanders, 49.
Sanders is best known for directing the 2012 feature Snow White And The Huntsman — and for running off with one of that film’s leading ladies, then 22-year-old actor Kristen Stewart, whose mother was played in the movie by Sanders’ own wife, model Liberty Ross.
According to his IMDB biography, Sanders has done little movie work since — although he had plans for a film enigmatically entitled Rub And Tug.
AK was an accomplished 24-year-old who had sold her first tech company at 19 and studied behavioural science at uni when she joined her sister in New York in 2010.
The fashion-obsessed AK worked as a consultant at a boutique creative agency and managed a band, Wim, before raising $14 million and co-founding app builder DWNLD in partnership with angel investor Fritz Lanman.
By 2016 that app was shut down and last year AK was working as an adviser to venture capitalist RSE Ventures.
Across the Atlantic Ocean in London, we find the only son of Paul and Annita, Keating’s firstborn child and heir, Patrick, 43.
Having initially embraced his high-public profile in Sydney, Patrick’s love for the limelight soured in 2011 after his marriage to model Amber McDonald ended.
While McDonald would go on to a more lucrative love match with second husband Aussie John Symond, to whom she was introduced via an arts auction supported by her sister-in-law KK, the one-time UBS finance executive Patrick moved on with Sydney stylist Penny Hunt.
After the birth of son Jax (now seven) with Hunt, Patrick left Australia and moved to the UK.
His two children with McDonald, Avalon and Slade, now call Symond’s Point Piper mansion home.
And, finally, to the sleeper in the family, the Keatings’ second-born child, eldest daughter and shyest child, Caroline.
Caroline, or “CK”, is the only Keating child still living in Australia.
Having worked in administrative roles and customer support during her first decade out of school — as well as studying at TAFE and trying her hand at acting and directing and working for a while at Foxtel — “CK”, 41, found her niche in hospitality in 2011 before moving to work at DreamLab App as a researcher in 2017.
She remains there today, and by all accounts is happy with a life lived away from the spotlight and the shadow of a famous family.