Biography
Politics, economics and foreign policy.
“The eyes and ears of Kelly appear to be everywhere. They still are."
- Malcolm Turnbull, 2015
Australian Media Hall of Fame 2017
Early Life
During the first decade of Paul’s life his family lived on military bases in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland. His father was regular army and a World War Two veteran having served in the Middle East, North Africa and New Guinea. After graduating from Sydney University Paul worked initially in the Prime Minister’s Department in Canberra in a division that serviced Government House and advised the prime minister on parliamentary, government and Executive Council issues.
Journalism
Paul was a lateral recruit into journalism at The Australian joining the paper in 1971 when Adrian Deamer was editor. His early focus in the Press Gallery was the public service but with the arrival of the Whitlam Government his policy priorities moved to foreign affairs, education and Aboriginal Affairs. In late 1973 he became deputy to the paper’s political correspondent, Alan Ramsey and then served as political correspondent of The Australian (1974-75) during one of the most dramatic and turbulent periods of our political history that saw the multiple troubles of the Whitlam Government, the rise of Malcolm Fraser as Liberal Party leader and the 1975 constitutional crisis.
Paul was dismissed as political correspondent on the eve of the 1975 election for his opposition to the Fraser-led Coalition’s blocking of the budget and his strong criticism of Sir John Kerr’s dismissal of the Whitlam Government. This brought an end to his initial five years working for News Corporation at a time when the pace of daily journalism and the competition intensified rapidly. The learning experience was vast - dealing with Press Gallery colleagues and competitors, a range of different editors and Rupert Murdoch as proprietor.
The Fairfax Years
In early 1976 Paul wrote his first book, The Unmaking of Gough, an account of the Labor Government over 1974 and 1975. In mid-1976 he joined the Fairfax company hired as political correspondent for the weekly The National Times by its editor, Max Suich. The weekly format was a challenge but an opportunity to write longer and often more investigative and historical-based articles. In 1979 he became deputy editor of the paper where he was a proponent of its reputation for long-form journalism.
In early 1981 Paul was appointed chief political correspondent and bureau chief of the Sydney Morning Herald (1981-84) under Vic Carroll as the new Editor-in-Chief with Chris Anderson as Editor and subsequently Carroll’s successor. Suich was Chief Editorial Executive at this time. Paul covered Malcolm Fraser’s final term as PM and the internal politics of the Labor Party, notably the leadership struggle between Bill Hayden and Bob Hawke leading to the 1983 election of the Hawke Government. In 1984 he published ‘The Hawke Ascendancy’, the inside story of how Hawke overcame internal resistance to become Labor leader and then defeated Fraser at the general election.
Return to The Australian and the Age of Reform
In 1985 Paul returned to News Corporation after an approach from its Chief Executive, Ken Cowley. The offer was a print-television position. Paul became National Affairs Editor at The Australian and as a commentator on the Channel Ten network. This led to his coverage of the Hawke-Keating era and one of the most substantial periods of reform in Australia’s history.
“Strong Supporter of the pro-market de-regulation reforms advanced by Hawke as PM and Paul Keating as Treasurer ”
Paul was a strong supporter throughout the 1980s decade of the pro-market de-regulation reforms advanced by Hawke as PM and Paul Keating as Treasurer. Paul argued these reforms were not just the right policies for the times – in terms of both efficiency and equity - but that they corrected for Australia’s historical failures. He argued they constituted a historic departure from the protectionist, introspective Australian Settlement policy structure that had prevailed for most of our history since Federation and that had held the nation back for too long. In covering coalition politics during the 1980s he supported the ‘drys’ in the Liberal Party and the internal policy changes advanced by John Howard.
One of the themes highlighted by Paul was the ability of Hawke and Keating to implement a sustained reform agenda but keep winning elections. Towards the end of the decade he became a strong advocate for Keating to replace Hawke. Paul was the Graham Perkin journalist of the Year (1990). For much of the decade Paul worked on a book covering and seeking to explain the reform period finally published in 1992 as The End of Certainty.
Being Editor-in-Chief At The Australian
In 1991 Paul was appointed as Editor-in-Chief of The Australian and moved to Sydney. This followed an offer and a joint approach by Ken Cowley and Rupert Murdoch over a dinner. He was Editor-in-Chief for five years and under his editorship the paper supported ongoing economic reform, a strong immigration program, industrial relations de-regulation, engagement with Asia, regional free trade, closer ties with Indonesia, the Keating Government’s Native Title Act and the cause of an Australian Republic.
During this period Paul worked closely with Cowley, attended the annual News Corporation conferences in the US and underwent annual reviews of the paper by Rupert Murdoch.
When Keating as PM put the republic on the agenda it won firm support from The Australian. Paul has been a supporter of the republican cause for many years speaking at events and seminars. From the time in the Prime Minister’s Department he had been a student of the role and powers of the Governor-General. Having covered the 1975 crisis Paul has followed the historical debate on the Whitlam dismissal and the republic ever since. In addition to his initial book on the Whitlam Government, Paul has written three subsequent books on the dismissal crisis: November 1975 (1995) at the twentieth anniversary, The Dismissal: In the Queen’s Name (2015) with Troy Bramston and The Truth of the Palace Letters (2020) with Troy Bramston. The latter book sought to correct the historical falsehood that the Queen had encouraged the Governor-General to dismiss Whitlam.
In late 1996 Paul stood down as Editor-in-Chief and choose to return to writing rather than seek a position in management.
Return to Writing
In returning to writing Paul had a wide brief, initially as International Editor and then as Editor-at-Large. He travelled to the US, Asia and Europe writing on foreign policy, economic and political trends. At home his focus was on the Howard Government where he supported its GST-led reform, fiscal policy consolidation and industrial relation changes. He has been a trenchant critic of the extremes in politics, notably the divisive politics on the right of Pauline Hanson and, on the left, of many of the policies advocated by the Greens.
“Supporter of the Republic Referendum in 1999"
Paul backed the unsuccessful 1999 republic referendum and was involved in a range of centenary of Federation events. He presented the 2001 ABC television five part documentary series to coincide with the centenary of Federation ‘100 Years – The Australian Story’ and published a book under the same title.
In 2002 he was appointed to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University under the auspices of the Chair of Australian Studies at the university. Paul became a Fellow at the Shorenstein Centre within the Kennedy School where he wrote, among other issues, on the politics and media coverage of boat people and asylum seeker crisis in the context of the 2001 election. He spoke on Australian politics at the university and addressed the Australian-American Association in New York. At the same time he was a visiting lecturer at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard where he gave a series of lectures under the title: ‘Shipwrecked in Arcadia: The Australian Experiment.’ These lectures dealt with Australian-American relations over half a century and Australia's rise to national maturity.
In 2003 Paul co-edited with Professor Peter Dawkins, Director of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, the book ‘hard heads, soft hearts - a new reform agenda for Australia.' Its theme was the need to end the disconnect in Australian politics between policy debates that went nowhere and the real needs of the country. For the past two decades Paul has been a sustained critic of the failures of the political system to deliver on much needed social and economic reforms that are fundamental to maintaining Australian prosperity.
When the ABC Insiders program began in 2001 Paul was a political commentator on its first program and performed this weekly Sunday morning role for eight years until 2009. He later became a regular commentator on Sky News.
Paul served for many years on the board of the Australia-Indonesia Institute and wrote extensively on the Australia-Indonesia relationship. He has been a long-standing participant in the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue and has written on US politics and foreign policy from the Reagan to the Biden Presidencies. Paul was a Fellow at the Lowy Institute, Sydney, in 2006, a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne in 2010 and a visiting fellow at the Menzies Centre, King’s College, London in 2014. He holds a Doctor of Letters from the University of Melbourne and in addition holds honorary doctorates from three other Australian universities – Sydney, New South Wales and Griffith. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs.
In 2009 he published ‘The March of Patriots’ offering a re-interpretation of both Keating and Howard as prime ministers. In 2014 he published ‘Triumph and Demise’, a comprehensive assessment of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd era. Since then, he has followed at close quarters and covered the Abbott, Turnbull and Morrison governments. He is currently working on a book that will analyse the period of Coalition Government from 2013 onwards.
Military History
Given his family background, Paul has had a special interest and long association with Australian military history. Paul has written on the Australian experiences in World War One and World War Two and the intersection of politics, war decisions and foreign policy during both wars. In 2012 Paul proposed, with his colleague Patrick Walters, that the centenary of the Great War should culminate in an Australian Government decision to establish a Western Front interpretative centre next to the Australian national monument at Villers-Bretonneux, France. Our recommendation, following a visit to the Western Front, was that Australia should draw upon the model established by Canada at its national monument at Vimy Ridge.
In 2014 Prime Minister Abbott appointed Paul as a member of the advisory committee assessing the proposal to establish the Sir John Monash Centre at Villers-Bretonneux, a proposal the Abbott Government backed and implemented. Paul travelled with Bob Hawke to Gallipoli at the 75th anniversary of the landing. He covered the centenary events at Gallipoli in 2015, in France in 2016 and 2018 – when the Monash Centre was opened - and went to Egypt for the 70th anniversary of the battle of El Alamein in 2012.
Boards
Paul is currently a director of the Judith Neilson Institute for Journalism and Ideas. In the past he has been a director of the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and of Melbourne University Publishing.
He is currently a director of Primary Focus, a not-for-profit seeking to improve Australia’s primary school education.
