The PM’s vision included Australia becoming a republic and Indigenous reconciliation – but people just wanted jobs

Paul Keating used to say leadership was about painting on a broad canvas.

The 1994 and 1995 cabinet papers, released on Monday, reveal the full sweep of the former prime minister’s vision for Australia: becoming a republic, building a cultural identity beyond sport, reconciliation with Australia’s Indigenous people through Mabo land rights, and a bigger voice on the world stage.

It was an era when the Australian film industry showed it could produce uniquely Australian content that made it overseas – Muriel’s Wedding, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert and Babe were among the scores of films produced.

Quick guide How to access the cabinet papers Show Hide Cabinet records for 1994 and 1995 held by the National Archives of Australia are accessible from 1 January 2018. Copies of 245 cabinet records from 1994 and 1995 have been made available to the media under embargo. The Guardian’s reports are based on these. Some were redacted due to national security concerns. Information about the cabinet records, copies of key cabinet documents, including selected submissions and decisions, are available on the national archives website.

Requests for access to records not already released may be made via RecordSearch on the website.

Bushfires and drought racked the country. The businessman Christopher Skase refused to come home from Spain to face the music and the opposition continued to be convulsed by leadership struggles, which ended only when John Howard regained the mantle in late 1995.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paul Keating speaks during question time in parliament, which he later partly shunned. Photograph: www.naa.gov.au

The papers underscore the harsh realities of a decade of economic reform and increasing globalisation on the Australian working population. Unemployment and the budget deficit dominated the daily political cut and thrust.



Keating’s deputy, Kim Beazley, who spoke to the media at the launch of the papers, explained that Labor had not expected to win the 1993 election, based on the “political mathematics” of having been in power for a decade.



“So from 1993 to 1996 there is a feeling of a sword of Damocles hanging over the head of the government, and that really the Australian people respected us but had somehow run out of patience with our approach,” he said.

During the early 90s “the recession we had to have”, as Keating had famously called it, pushed unemployment to 11%. Having surprisingly won the election against the Liberals under John Hewson, the Keating government embarked on an ambitious program called Working Nation to tackle the problem.

Devising the program dominated cabinet discussions during 1994. Much of 1995 was spent evaluating its success and trying to grapple with the economy’s slow growth.



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“Unemployment has become a serious economic as well as social problem,” the then employment minister, Simon Crean, told the cabinet in February 1994.

“I do not believe that economic growth alone will solve the problem,” he said in a cabinet submission. “Rather, an integrated and comprehensive policy response is needed across a number of portfolios to improve skills formation, the effectiveness of labour market programs and to better link them to the current income support arrangements and to industry and regional development policies.”

At the centre of Crean’s plan was a “job compact” providing assured job placements to those unemployed for more than 18 months, together with a strengthened set of reciprocal obligations and the introduction of a “training” or “job-ready” wage during the placement.

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It also included more intensive management of short-term unemployed people who were at risk of becoming the long-term jobless, and a youth training initiative.

Training was expanded through Tafe and apprenticeships, and employers required to provide more entry-level opportunities to the long-term unemployed.

The social security minister, Peter Baldwin, urged that the jobs package be accompanied by an overhaul of the social payments system, as a way of getting “more bang for our buck” and ensuring payments did not act as a disincentive for moving from unemployment benefits into work.

The gap between minimum wages and unemployment benefits had narrowed, raising concerns about the economic signals in the system. “A cut to benefits of the magnitude required to have a significant impact is obviously unacceptable and out of the question,” Baldwin said.

“The alternative solution is to encourage labour force participation of both partners among unemployed people and to provide additional income support to married couples with one low wage earner whose spouse does not work because of their need to care for dependent children.”

All this while the Keating government was attempting to bring the budget back to surplus. Finance regularly demanded cuts to fund new programs, but the main way the surplus was to be achieved was to dust off unpopular privatisations. In April 1995 the cabinet agreed to long-term leases of the international airports, with an expected gain of between $2bn and $2.5bn. In May the cabinet agreed to sell the remaining shares in the Commonwealth Bank to raise $4.36bn.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Former Labor leaders Kim Beazley, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. Photograph: Julian Smith/AAP

A hallmark of the Keating government was its preparedness to benchmark the success or otherwise of policy. “We were an evidence-based government that really liked to study how to tackle problems,” Beazley said, contrasting the way it worked to Kevin Rudd’s obsession with making a new announcement every day.

“The [papers show] the intensity of the way we used to do business to arrive at a decision. There was enormous public consultation, usually with an advisory body put in place. The agencies were consulted. It would be a very slow run getting there, and the idea of a short sharp message and then moving on to another message was just alien.”

After 15 months of Working Nation, the sixth progress report showed unemployment ticking up again to 8.5%.

“We have successfully stemmed the flow into long-term unemployment although it is getting more difficult to make headway with the economy slowing and vacancy opportunities reducing,” Crean told cabinet.

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And, as Beazley put it, “the public had run out of patience with us”.

There was a sense that “the middle” was slipping away, wearied by falling wages, economic reforms and persistently high unemployment.



Beazley suggested the unemployment rate was due in part to the fact that the participation rate had increased because of the success of the government in promoting the virtues of work.



But a Reserve Bank analysis of unemployment in the 90s suggests a more complex picture. The participation rate was slow to respond after the 1993 recession, and technological change and forces of globalisation were driving greater productivity. The nature of work was changing.

In a May 1995 submission, the senator Nick Bolkus argued for an increase in the skilled migration program to 30,800 places, despite high unemployment. He told cabinet business had reported major difficulties in finding skilled workers. Australia was also competing with other countries to attract skilled migrants.

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The slowness of the recovery would nurture the seeds of Howard’s win in 1996 through an appeal to the forgotten “battlers”. It also gave birth to Pauline Hanson and One Nation.

The republic, Mabo and even the environment were issues that resonated with the better educated and political aficionados, but not with workers struggling to make ends meet. Keating’s big agenda was open to being painted as elitist and out of touch.

It didn’t help that Keating himself became withdrawn. Having won “the sweetest victory of them all” he declared he would attend question time only on designated days. Angered that the media had written him off before the 1993 election, he punished them by rationing his presence at press conferences, too.

But mostly it was the economy.



Australia went through the harsh realities of losing manufacturing in the 90s. The forces of globalisation and massive changes in the nature of work were upending the political order, just as they are now in the US, the UK and Europe.