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Grand Ambition: Paul Keating's Global Vision for Australia
Written with never-before-seen documents from Paul Keating's archive and drawing on many years of conversations, this book explores the ambitions for Australia that guided Keating: arguably the last Prime Minister with a compelling long-term vision for the country.
As Australia stands on the edge of the greatest reappraisal of its strategic circumstances, what is the relevance of Paul Keating's vision for Australia in the world today?
At the moment of his political defeat in 1996, Paul Keating stood defiant, still arguing for a vision of Australia that reached far beyond the limits of electoral politics. Three decades on, this book revisits that vision: bold, contested and somewhat unravelled by subsequent Coalition governments. It traces how Keating sought to reshape Australia's foreign policy at the end of the Cold War: anchoring the country in Asia, embedding China within a regional order, deepening ties with Indonesia and challenging long-held assumptions about dependence on great powers. For Keating, economic reform, national identity and international strategy were part of a single, sweeping project to remake Australia.
Ambitious and provocative, this is both a portrait of a singular political mind and a reappraisal of a pivotal era. It argues that the questions Keating grappled with—about independence, security and identity—remain unresolved, and more urgent than ever in a world defined by rising tensions between the United States, China and the rest of the world.
As Australia stands on the edge of the greatest reappraisal of its strategic circumstances, what is the relevance of Paul Keating's vision for Australia in the world today?
At the moment of his political defeat in 1996, Paul Keating stood defiant, still arguing for a vision of Australia that reached far beyond the limits of electoral politics. Three decades on, this book revisits that vision: bold, contested and somewhat unravelled by subsequent Coalition governments. It traces how Keating sought to reshape Australia's foreign policy at the end of the Cold War: anchoring the country in Asia, embedding China within a regional order, deepening ties with Indonesia and challenging long-held assumptions about dependence on great powers. For Keating, economic reform, national identity and international strategy were part of a single, sweeping project to remake Australia.
Ambitious and provocative, this is both a portrait of a singular political mind and a reappraisal of a pivotal era. It argues that the questions Keating grappled with—about independence, security and identity—remain unresolved, and more urgent than ever in a world defined by rising tensions between the United States, China and the rest of the world.
308 pages, Hardcover
Published September 1, 2026
About the author
James Curran
113 books22 followersJames Curran is Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College, London. He has published over 18 books, including Culture Wars: The Media and British Left (with Ivor Gaber and Julian Petley) (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), Power without Responsibility (with Jean Seaton), 6th edition (Routledge, 2003), Mass Media and Society (ed. with Michael Gurevitch), 4th edition (Arnold, 2005) and Media and Power (Routledge, 2002).
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