This article gives a good indictation as to what is wrong with Australia. It has lost its soul. The article highlights the need for politicians to understand thast there is more to leading people than just making us comfortable economically. No politician of today articulates a vision for the future and so our society has become selfcentred.

I beg to differ.

Like James, I am the first in my family to attend univserity. I graduated from high school in 2002.

Howard is not an inspirational leader for me but Tony Abbott is. There you have a man with courage, will and a strong personality. What is lacking from Costello, and a lesser extent from Howard, are personal values. Young men and women need and embrace values exposed by senior leaders both on the left and right.

James, while you have Paul Keating I and a younger generation of concerned Australians can look to Abbott for inspiration and leadership.

PS. Com'mon you didn't really think that Keating's republic was inspiring did you?

I agree with the writer totally - Keating's own vision allowed young Australians like myself to believe in a nation that included one in which the young were valued and mobilised as participants. His decisions were openly based on building a future that was filled with opportunity at all levels -individual, regional, national and global.

They were exciting times, full of promise. Unfortunately Howard does not inspire the young - they are more often than not feeling disempowered, and at the mercy of political leaders rather than seeing themselves as a source of motivation for leaders as I believe Keating saw them.

I am surrounded by young people every day and hear them lament the lack of real empathy this government has for the challenges they face.Look no further than voluntary student unionism, the total disregard for the anti-war movement, the disgrace over the Kyoto Protocol, the joke that tells us the unemploment figures are down when huge amounts of our kids face a lifetime of insecurity in casual employment... dont think they don't notice. They just know this government does not listen or give them any choice over the direction of their country.

It is sorry time in history and how it has made my day to think of an Australia with Keating again at the helm - imagine how he would relish the challenges of global interconnectedness we now live with.

What did Paul keating call himself?"The Placebo Domdingo of Aust Politics" or something like that.Harold Holt has a better chance of a come back.

I've got to admit that not hearing the words, scumbag, spiv, etcetera..in question time has made for very boring parliamentary coverage...and who could forget this prophecy...(I WISH IT WASN'T)

"I do not want to hear any mealy mouthed talk from the Member for Benelong."

http://www.webcity.com.au/keating/

Arjay, yet another forum where I will be differing from your opinion, but don't take it personally. I had the good fortune to be working in a rather prominent union when Keating just won his "True Believers' election against John (Hewson). A walk in the park for him and rightly so. Keating addressed our National Conference and had just made the cover (prior to the election) of Rolling Stone magazine (how cool is that Little Johnny)! I got the intro, got the autographed mag, which is now framed, preserved and hanging proudly in my house. He was inspirational, he had the cojones and the vision to take us kicking and screaming into the 21st century, rather than the 1950s. whatever anyone can say about the economy and the interest rates, he was the only PM that was willing to go Mabo and deliver on it. A major step forward and for that alone, his report card has a gold star in my book. I don't think he would make a comeback, but god I miss him. Question time has never been the same!