Keating relieved that Howard era is over Monday Nov 26 08:12 AEDT
Former Prime Minister Paul Keating says he is relieved that Australians have thrown the Howard coalition government out of office.
John Howard defeated the Keating-led Labor government at the 1996 election, but Mr Keating said Mr Howard had squandered his time in office, and made Australia a more divided nation.
"... my emotion was not happiness; rather, it was relief," Mr Keating wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.
"Relief that the nation had put itself back on course. Relief that the toxicity of the Liberal social agenda - the active disparagement of particular classes and groups, that feeling of alienation in your own country - was over.
