Voters were warned on John Howard, says Paul Keating

PAUL Keating says he gave Australian voters a clear warning in 1996 about life under a John Howard-led Coalition government.

PAUL Keating believes Australians were wrong to vote him out of office in 1996 as the electorate was given a clear warning about life under a John Howard-led Coalition government.

"The country can't say that it wasn't told," Mr Keating said. "The point is that countries make mistakes and they get things wrong."

His comments, made in a series of frank interviews with past Labor prime ministers and opposition leaders, are included in a new collection of political speeches.

Mr Keating, prime minister from 1991 to 1996, argues that in his speech to the National Press Club on the eve of the 1996 election, he accurately predicted how Mr Howard's government would unravel many of his government's policies, particularly on workplace relations, Medicare and the environment.

"It was very much about the new order," Mr Keating said, reflecting on his government's economic and social reforms at the end of 13 years of government. "(That speech) said more about Australian public life and where we had come to than anything else," he says in the book.

In his speech, Mr Keating said he had been able "to tell the people about the need for changes, to tell them why, to try and describe the kind of country we want".

But at the 1996 election, he argues the media did not adequately scrutinise Mr Howard's election policies or his political intentions.

Mr Howard, he said in the speech, sought the prime ministership with "a grab-bag of promises driven by a polling agency and an advertising agency". Nevertheless, in the speech, Mr Keating's warning to voters was: "When the government changes, the country changes."

He believes this was confirmed by the actions of the Howard government, despite promising few policy changes.

In the speech, Mr Keating forecast that a Howard government would remove industrial protections, abolish the no-disadvantage test, weaken the industrial umpire and diminish collective bargaining. The speech predicted Work Choices, Mr Keating argues.

Mr Keating says his government did not get enough credit for economic reforms, which granted to the Howard government a period of long economic growth.

Also in the book, Bob Hawke, prime minister from 1983 to 1991, argues that parliamentary debate is "just a charade" as the outcome does not "depend upon the quality of your argument". "It didn't matter if you made a terrible speech or a good speech, the decisions were already made," Mr Hawke reveals.

Gough Whitlam says he would have resigned again as Labor leader if the party had remained unresponsive to his call for sweeping internal reform.

Mr Whitlam had resigned in April 1968 - just a year after becoming party leader - after clashing with Labor's federal executive. His further threat could have kept Labor from winning government in 1972.

Kim Beazley, who led Labor from 1996 to 2001 and again from 2005 to 2006, describes the 2001 election campaign as "one of the most divisive campaigns in Australian political history".

"It was conducted in the shadow of the 9/11 atrocity and the argument over the sudden increase in the number of arrivals to Australia by sea of individuals claiming refugee status," he says. "Those events still haunt Australian politics."

Now Australia's ambassador to the US, Mr Beazley says the Howard government's waterfront legislation and Work Choices policy were driven by a desire to "destroy the union movement".

"Many workers are heartland Liberal supporters, including many trade unionists. They were baffled by its implications and finally responded in the 2007 elections," he says.