ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has used his bi-annual luncheon with The Advocate’s board and editorial executive to ask if he’s ever wheeled out like the reanimated corpse of John Howard is at Liberal Party events, he wants killing.
“Christ alive,” he said.
“If they [Labor] ever thaw me out and shove me in a chair next to an opposition leader, I want one of you to shoot me.”
Mr Keating’s comments come as the man who flogged him mercilessly in the 1996 election, where Labor lost 31 seats and the Howard Government was elected on a 94-seat majority, was recently taken out of the Liberal Party deep freeze and forced to perform at Peter Dutton’s campaign launch.
“Did you see him? [Howard] Goodness me, it’s enough to chill your blood. It’s nothing personal, just don’t ever let that happen to me. I wan you [points at Advocate cadet Wendell Hussey] I want you, son, to find something like a snubnose .38, like, ah, a Smith & Wesson Detective Special or even a .22 rifle, and just put two behind my right ear, right here, son.”
Wendell politely nodded.
“Good. I’m counting on you, son. Don’t let them wheel my warm corpse out and put me next to Albanese or that Chalmers. Christ. It’s enough that he knows that much about me. The first time I met him, he recited my Medicare number back to me. It was wrong but close enough to make you wonder.”
The Advocate reached out to the Prime Minister’s Office for comment but were yet to receive a reply as this goes to print.
More to come.
