Hammer time as Paul Keating goes to work

PAUL Keating had nearly made it to the end of his speech when the banging began.

PAUL Keating had nearly made it to the end of his speech when the banging began.

The occasion was the Sydney launch of After Words, a hefty collection of his post-prime ministerial speeches that, possibly due to oversight, is not subtitled Stuff That Bloody Don Watson Didn't Have a Hand In. As PJK was navigating his way through his thank-yous, a tradie on the other side of a wall at the Angel Place Recital Hall got busy with a hammer. "Not all the workers are on strike," Keating observed brightly. Earlier, we asked him when the memoir was likely to follow; alas, it seems After Words will have to suffice. "This thing, if you read it, has got the big story in it," Keating told Strewth, later telling the audience: "Substantially autobiographical, [the book] goes to subjects and themes of interest to me without the show-and-tell and gossip elements that are part and parcel of autobiographies." Ah, well. Modestly, Keating hoped it would become "somewhat of a style manual" for the Labor Party, an outfit that later scored a light clip on the ear as he urged Australia to grow up: "We are more alone now than at any time in our history. Our good occupancy of our continent would be best underwritten by our cultural openness and that cannot go to beating up Indians in Melbourne any more than it can go to having our neighbours believe we have shut our borders to the human community outside." There was talk of, among other things: Indonesia, truth, beauty, China, inclusiveness, the brain-activating power of Mahler, and how we can no longer afford to "gad about as people uncertain of ourselves . . . hanging on to the Queen's coat-tails while waving that embarrassing flag." He also had a gentle dig at the press gallery's reduction of his interest in neoclassicism to a penchant for French clocks: "Not that many of them would recognise an object from the revolutionary years even if they tripped over one at the markets or the second-hand shop". All in all, a reasonable warm-up for his on-stage chat with Kerry O'Brien (see the news pages for that one).

Hymn to him

AFTER Words was launched by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who managed in an efficiently short space of time to: call Keating "one of the most brilliant public speakers in the country"; describe the book as "some of the best brain food I've had in a long time"; liken the collected speeches to "a long, cool drink in the middle of a very hot desert"; and note it was hard to read them without feeling a sense of "grief at the loss that great, colourful, articulate intellect on the public stage". She also touched on Keating's "legendary self-belief and confidence", something the man himself happily demonstrated later as he reminisced about one speech: "Yesterday, I read it again -- and what a good speech."

Tony the tragician

WHAT do you do when faced with the very disparate news that (a) Qantas has, as one Twitter wag noted, become "the world's first carbon neutral airline", and (b) more Australian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan? If you're Tony Abbott, bind them together with the magic T-word. Take it away, Tony: "The latest news out of Afghanistan is tragic indeed. Australia has lost three brave soldiers." Then a few breaths later, "On the Qantas dispute, look right now there are tens of thousands of Australians stranded here and abroad because the government has procrastinated for too long.

It is tragic for all of these people that they can't get home or can't get to work because the government has failed to act . . ." Er, Tony?

Collateral damage

ONE person affected by the Qantas shambles was a US university student by the name of Alan Joyce, who was at the pointy end of a case of mistaken identity on Twitter. You may not be surprised to learn not all the tweets directed at him were warm. As he noted plaintively at one point, "Oh dear, I think Australia is waking up again . . . time to prepare for another deluge of tweets." He did score plenty of extra followers, though. He was consoled by the American woman who tweets as @theashes, an earlier accidental recipient of tweeted Australian passions.

In a nutshell

YOUR challenge, should you choose to accept it: federal Liberal MP and Deputy Speaker Peter Slipper is advertising for a media adviser, and a concise one, at that. (Mercifully, this rather rules us out of contention) The ad tells prospective candidates to pitch themselves in "in 25 words or fewer". How could one possibly encapsulate a desire to work for Slipper in so small a space? Strewth awaits your suggestions, and not just from disgruntled Liberals writing under pseudonyms.

Bon appetit

BOB Katter, Tony Windsor, Rob Oakeshott and Andrew Wilkie will be dining in Parliament House tonight with same-sex marriage advocates, courtesy of a successful bid in this year's federal press gallery Midwinter Ball Charity auction. If someone could slip in a question to Katter about his mates who shoot giraffes, that would be ace.

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