First he coined it, then he became it. It was Paul Keating who coined the phrase “Relevance Deprivation Syndrome”. Now, he spends his twilight years constantly deluding himself that the entire nation is waiting with bated breath for his opinion on the price of eggs in China.
There’s nothing Keating won’t flap his gums about – ranting and screeching and begging for just a bit of attention. Instead, he just keeps making an annoying dickhead of himself. Case in point:
Paul Keating has launched an attack on former RSL president Greg Melick, branding him a “dope” who was seeking a war with China after the retired major-general used his Remembrance Day address to condemn the nation’s military preparedness.
In fact, Melick was making the opposite argument: that failing to prepare for war only made it more inevitable and infinitely worse when it comes.
As if, though, Keating would know the first thing about defence. How dare he lecture Melick, let alone blatherskite insulting nonsense like “the strategic jottings of a dope”? What would Keating know? He spent his entire life doing nothing but working in an office and making himself rich (with China’s help). Melick served his country for 52 years.
While Keating was ‘managing’ a shitty pop band no one ever heard of, Melick became a commando, rising through the enlisted ranks, from private to become a major general and colonel commandant of the 1st Commando Regiment. He held senior roles in the ADF, including assistant chief of the defence force (reserves) and head of the cadet, reserve and employer support division.
While Keating was using his colossal taxpayer-funded pension to collect French clocks and greasing up to China for even more money, Melick became national president of the RSL, and remains on its high-powered defence and security committee with senior military figures.
Keating really needs to sit down and shut up. If that’s even possible for this egotistical Quisling.
“Mr Melick’s remarks, far from being some kind of clarion call to the battlefield, show only how craven he is to the assumption that China poses a direct military threat to Australia,” Mr Keating wrote. “Fundamentally, Melick wants to drag us into a military exchange with the Chinese, a military superpower, ignoring the fact the Chinese have no intention of attacking Australia and never have had. His utterances are simply the strategic jottings of a dope.”
Well, Keating would say that, wouldn’t he? After all, he spent 13 years collecting a fat cheque from the CCP, as a board member of the China Development Bank: a Beijing-run foreign influence body. Unsurprisingly, Keating attacks anyone who dares question China’s increasing belligerence in the Asia-Pacific.
Opposition defence spokesman Angus Taylor backed Mr Melick, saying Mr Keating’s attack was “deeply disrespectful and entirely out of touch with the realities Australia faces today”.
“Greg Melick is a decorated Australian who has served his country with distinction for more than five decades,” he said.
“He’s earned the right to speak about the state of our national defence, far more than a former prime minister who continues to dismiss the growing strategic risks in our region.”
And Keating’s earned the right to shut his over-sized gob, if he can bring himself to do it.
Then we might all have some peace.
