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Paul John Keating (born January 18, 1944) was the twenty-fourth Prime Minister of Australia, from 1991 to 1996. He is a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Keating, one of four children grew up in Bankstown, a working-class suburb of Sydney. His father was a boilermaker and trade union representative. Leaving school at 14, Keating joined the Labor Party almost immediately afterwards, and developed a friendship with Labor Party icon and controversial New South Wales Premier Jack Lang. Keating apparently met the elderly Lang to discuss politics on a weekly basis for some time. Rising in the Labor Party, he became a trade union researcher and official, before entering parliament at the relatively young age of 25 in the seat of Blaxland.

Keating was a backbencher for most of the Whitlam Labor government, but briefly became Minister for Northern Australia in 1975, one of the youngest ministers in history. In the same year, he married Annita van Iersal, a flight attendant for Alitalia. The Keatings had three children, who spent some of their teenage years in The Lodge.

In 1983, he became Treasurer under the Hawke government, a post which he held until 1991. Keating was acknowledged as the driving political force behind many of the macroeconomic reforms Australia made in the period, including floating the Australian dollar substantial cuts in tariffs, and reforms of taxation. In 1985, Keating and Treasury proposed a value-added tax, an option seriously debated before being dropped by Hawke's belief that the idea would be highly unpopular in the electorate.

In 1988, in a famous meeting at Kirribilli House, Hawke and Keating discussed the handover of the leadership to Keating. Keating believed that Hawke reneged on a deal to resign in 1990. In 1991, he challenged Hawke for the leadership, but lost and resigned as Treasurer, returning to the backbench. Throughout the rest of 1991, the position of the Hawke government deteriorated and Keating defeated Hawke in a second leadership challenge in December, and became Prime Minister.

He led the Labor party to an unexpected election victory in 1993, where it is generally agreed that the attack he led on the Liberal Party's economic policies (including the electoral poison of a new value-added tax) was decisive.

As Prime Minister, Keating's interests and public perception widened from the narrowly focused technocrat he seemed to be as Treasurer. His agenda included items such as severing Australia's ties with the British monarchy, reconciliation with Australia's indigenous population, and further engagement with Asia. These issues, which came to be known as Keating's "big picture" approach, were highly popular with the tertiary-educated middle class, but failed to capture the aspirations of rural and outer-suburban voters who swung to the Liberal Party in the 1996 election.

Since his election loss in 1996, Keating has mostly kept a low profile as a director of various companies. His marriage ended in divorce not long after leaving politics.