Unfinished Business

Book excerpt: In the early 1980s, Paul Keating set out to reinvent the Australian economy. He floated the Australian dollar, liberated banking and finance from its regulatory shackles, and — most significantly — introduced a universal superannuation scheme. The results were astounding growth in the value of the national economy and in the personal wealth of ordinary Australians. Keating’s revolution was based on his insight that, by encouraging every citizen to save for retirement, a huge pool of investment capital would be created that would help enrich the nation. But the fulfillment of his vision was denied by his political opponents after the Australian people voted Keating out in 1996. In Unfinished Business, David Love, a veteran economic and financial observer, becomes Keating’s modern-day Boswell, reporting fascinating and frank conversations with the former prime minister both before and after his political demise. Writing with great verve and insight, David Love explores the story of Paul Keating’s interrupted revolution — a story that has never been fully told — and sounds a timely warning that the failure to finish the job Keating started has left our new-found prosperity vulnerable, particularly in the current climate of international economic uncertainty. The Keating revolution, it turns out, is at least as relevant to the future as it has been to the past.