Updated January 01, 2017 01:32:29

Photo: Paul Keating on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 1993. (www.thepunch.com.au)

Billy Ray Cyrus was on the radio. Sydney was named as host of the 2000 Olympics. And the little-known Baz Luhrmann released his first film.

And in a big house on the hill in Canberra, Australia's new leader was finding his feet.

We now have greater insight into Paul Keating's first years as prime minister in 1992 and 1993 thanks to the release today of thousands of pages of cabinet papers by the National Archives.

Mr Keating has chosen not to reflect publicly on the cabinet records, but they show a prime minister focused on deeper engagement with Asia to reboot a faltering economy, while also advancing Indigenous rights at home.

Here's some of the standout issues from the time:

Economic recovery

Nearly 1 million people were out of work as a result of "the recession we had to have", as Mr Keating famously called it.

The cabinet papers don't hide the fact that Australia was in need of an "economic recovery".

They show the prime minister met with business, union and community leaders to hear their ideas for creating jobs, and boosting Australia's productivity and competitiveness.

The cabinet agreed on an economic statement on January 7, 1992. That same month, Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia, and Mr Keating broke royal protocol — and outraged the British tabloids — by touching her on the back.

Photo: Former prime minister Paul Keating touches Queen Elizabeth on the back during a 1992 Royal visit. (Supplied)

Racial discrimination and immigration

In 1992, the cabinet endorsed an amendment to the Racial Discrimination Act that would make it an offence to "publicly incite others to hate, have contempt for, or ridicule a person because of their race, colour or national origin".

"This resolution formed the basis of section 18C, which would eventually be included in the Act in 1995," said Nicholas Brown, a cabinet historian from Australian National University.

We're still debating the merits of this amendment 25 years later.

What is the Racial Discrimination Act, how does it work, and why do some politicians so desperately want to see it changed?

One cabinet paper acknowledged that balancing freedoms was a "delicate task".

"It is inevitable that in a liberal democracy there will be special interest groups who will press for the legal line to be drawn in one place rather than another," it said.

While the cabinet paper recommended racial vilification be made unlawful, it also recommended racist violence not be made a specific crime "at this stage", saying existing criminal law should be used instead.

Immigration issues were also simmering at this time, with cabinet agreeing to detain people who arrived by boat in Australia between November 20, 1989, and December 1, 1992.

Native Title and Indigenous rights

Mr Keating was also navigating through landmark moments in advancing Indigenous rights at this time.

It was in 1992 the High Court made its Mabo decision. Within months, the prime minister gave his now-famous Redfern address, in which he said: "We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers."

But the newly released papers show the divisions within cabinet on the merits of Native Title legislation.

Mr Keating referred to this division when he spoke to ABC's Four Corners in 2012:

"Senior people in the cabinet wanted me to give it up towards the end, and I said, 'You've got to be joking, you've got to be joking'," he said.

The Native Title Act passed the Senate in 1993, recognising the ties Aboriginal people have to the land.

The Government also responded to the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody at this time. But the then-Aboriginal affairs minister claims not much has happened since.

"I use this occasion to call on our Prime Minister to support a national audit of the implementation of the royal commission recommendations," Robert Tickner said.

Post-Cold War spying concerns

In 1993, the Keating government was briefed about "foreign signals intelligence activity against Australia" including the activity of "personnel from the Russian foreign intelligence service – the SVR", which replaced the Soviet-era KGB.

Almost 30 years after the end of the Cold War, ASIO publicly acknowledges it was infiltrated by Soviet spies.

But this section of the released cabinet papers is heavily redacted.

It includes an ASIO assessment of the Russian embassy in Canberra as well as "several other Asia-Pacific countries" whose names have been blacked out by the National Archives.

Australia's intelligence agencies concluded there was "a continuing threat from 'hackers' to Government information processing systems of all types", and that the threat would "continue to grow".

Topics: federal-government, federal-parliament, 20th-century, australia

First posted January 01, 2017 01:10:49