US election: time to cut the tag with America says Paul Keating

Donald Trump victory offers a chance to “cut tag” tying us to US international policy decisions, Paul Keating believes.

Paul Keating. Picture: Getty Images.

The election of Donald Trump should force Australia to rethink its alliance with the United States and offers a chance to “cut the tag” tying us to American international policy decisions, former Prime Minister Paul Keating believes.

Mr Keating said Australia in the last 15 years has come to see itself as a lesser ally in its partnership with the US, which has taken on a “sacramental quality”. Instead, Australia is a “better society”, which should focus its attention on relationships in Asia.

“This society of ours is a better society than the United States,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 program.

“It’s more even, it’s more fair. We’ve had a 50 per cent increase in real incomes in the last 20 years, median America has had zero. We’ve had universal health protection. From the cradle to the grave … This is a better society than the United States.

“We’ve got to this almost sort of crazy position now where the American alliance ... it has now taken on a reverential, sacramental quality,” he said.

Mr Keating said since former Prime Minister John Howard’s involvement in the Iraq War, Australia’s position on the world stage has diminished.

“Since I left public office, in the Howard years with Iraq, you know, and in the years since, we’ve had more or less a tag-along foreign policy, tagging along to the United States. It’s time to cut the tag. Time to get out of it.

“What we need to do is make our way in Asia ourselves with an independent foreign policy.”

President-Elect Trump has had a number of good ideas, Mr Keating said, that signal a once-in-a-generation policy shift for the United States, from a post War multilateral action strategy to a more “US-centric” platform.

“Trump says can’t we have a better relationship with Russia? Not a bad idea. Then he says, instead of the pivot to squeeze China down, can’t we get along better with China? Can’t we come to a better relationship with China? Not a bad idea. There’s two reasonable ideas there,” Mr Keating said.

“So there is some prospect that America is going to become more America-centric and less the template of 1947.”

Former Prime Minister John Howard, also speaking to the ABC’s 7.30 program, rejected Mr Keating’s calls to distance ourselves from the US, saying Australia’s relationship with the United States is long and will remain “warm” through a Trump presidency.

“I, in the long run, am pretty confident that the historical warmth of the relationship will continue. I don’t believe the administration, the new administration is going to walk away from old allies,” he said.

“So those people who are talking about the need for some kind of radical recasting of our attitude towards the United States forget the reality that this is a relationship so deeply embedded in history and sentiment that it survives changes of personnel both in Canberra and Washington.”

Mr Howard, who said earlier this year he “trembled” at the thought of Mr Trump being elected president, said of the two major candidates, Mr Trump reached out to the disaffected working class.

“You’ve got to try to help the people who are disconnected,” he said.

“I think that was one of the strengths that Trump had, that Hillary Clinton didn’t have. He didn’t insult those unemployed white male workers in the Midwest, he embraced them. Whereas Hillary Clinton called them deplorables. It was a failure of a most fundamental and elemental political lesson.”

Mr Howard said people need to accept the election result and “wait and see what occurs”.