He was a disastrous Prime Minister, much like Paul Martin in many ways in that he went from a competent treasurer to a hopeless PM. Also, in his period as Treasurer, Keating personally lobbied for Australia’s most radical Islamic cleric, Sheikh al-Hilaly, to be granted permanent residence.
He rorted Australia’s immigration policy, and thereby paved the way for the rise of Pauline Hanson (Australia’s Pim Fortuyn/Pat Buchanan, if you’ll forgive my clumsy parallels) which the Left sanctimoniously blamed on John Howard. The moral of the story is that the Left is constitutionally incapable of knowing when it is wrong, and Keating was the worst example of this.
Posted by Phil on Sun, 26 Jun 2005 07:56 | #
That Keating fellow always gave me the creeps.