Former prime minister Paul Keating has reacted to the shock election of Donald Trump by calling for Australia to rethink its relationship with the US.
Paul Keating says Australia should focus less on the US alliance and more on Asia #auspol #abc730 https://t.co/B3iA6ZlVrr
In an interview on ABC's 7:30 program, Keating was asked about Trump's coming presidency and immediately launched into a passionate rant about why Australia has a better and more fair society than the US:
“This whole question about sub-ordination to the United States in a sort of broad policy terms, this society of ours is a better society than the United States.
It’s more even, it’s more fair, we’ve had a 50% increase in real incomes in the last 20 years. Median America has had zero, zero.
We have universal health protection, from the cradle to the grave.
We have a retirement income system, with superannuation.
We have high participation rates in schools.
We don’t shoot our children in schools and if they were to be shot we’d take the guns off the people who shot them. The Americans do not do this.
This is a better society than the United States.
Therefore the idea we should get around like Uriah Heep as we are some sort of subordinate outfit that has to get a signal from abroad before we think for ours is a complete denial of everything we have created here.