Paul Keating says Australia should resist strategic subordination to the United States without accepting Chinese dominance, and instead preserve its own sovereignty.

The Sydney launch of historian James Curran’s new book, Grand Ambition: Paul Keating’s Global Vision for Australia (Simon & Schuster, 2026), had the energy of a rock concert.

Curran’s conversation with Australia’s 24th prime minister drew a packed audience ready for a healthy dose of Keating wit and provocation. The man sitting to my left told me he had secured a ticket only after spending several weeks on the waiting list. The woman on my right said she had come by herself because, while she had been a Keating fan all her life, her husband was a supporter of John Howard.

The 82-year-old statesman spoke to the packed, multi-level theatre like a man who had completed his political odyssey and could now take the long view of Australia’s place in history.

There was also something of the mountaintop in his demeanour: the sense of someone who had reached the peak and acquired an aerial view of Australia’s place in the world.

The conversation ranged widely, from the influence of Keating’s upbringing on his worldview to AUKUS, Indigenous reconciliation, the republic, and the case for fundamental structural reform of the Australian economy. But its central concern was Australia’s place in the world – where it stands, and where Keating believes it should.

Naturally, that meant asking how Australia should navigate what Curran described as the ‘diabolical situation’ of ‘swimming between sharks’ – the US on one side and China on the other.

The first of those great powers to come under discussion was the US.

When Curran asked whether Australia should be ‘more upfront about telling the Americans what we will and won’t do’, Keating turned to prepared notes about General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded Allied forces in the Pacific during the Second World War.

Speaking of MacArthur’s meeting with prime minister John Curtin, Keating said:

He met John Curtin at the Lodge in Canberra. And he said to Curtin… that the US viewed Australia solely as a military base to strike Japan rather than, get........

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