Adam Bandt urges Paul Keating to defend Labor’s ‘drift to the right’ and challenges former PM to National Press Club debate

Greens leader Adam Bandt has hit back at Paul Keating and accused the former prime minister of attempting to “re-write history”.

Mr Bandt savaged the Labor Party during his address to the National Press Club on Wednesday accusing it of drifting further to the right of Australian politics beginning with the Hawke-Keating governments.

The Greens leader said the ALP had become a “neo-liberal party”, a claim which drew the considerable ire from the former prime minister who called Mr Bandt a “bounder and a distorter of political truth”.

“How could any reasonable person describe the universality of Medicare as an exercise in conservative neoliberalism,” Mr Keating told the Nine newspapers.

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But Mr Bandt doubled down and mocked the former prime minister for “boasting” about his privatisation record including selling off the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas and vaccine manufacturer CSL.

“Paul Keating’s had a few choice words to say about me, about that. Paul Keating’s got a sharp tongue but a short memory,” Mr Bandt said on Thursday.

“Paul Keating is Labor’s patron saint of privatisation.”

He then challenged the elder statesman to debate on Labor’s drifting economic ideology and accused him of being responsible for massive government service cuts since he left office.

“I am happy to debate Paul Keating anywhere, anytime, about Labor’s record in bringing economic rationalism and neo-liberalism to this country,” he said.

“Paul Keating’s entitled to his views but he’s not entitled to rewrite history.

“If he wants a debate, bring it on. I suggest we meet at the National Press Club to have a debate about Labor’s role in cutting public spending and bringing in tax cuts for the very wealthy and big corporations in this country.

“There’s not one single thing that Paul Keating can say in defence of this current government’s budget because this government is sounding far too much like the old government with their talk of budget cuts while people remain with low wages and incomes below the poverty line.”

Mr Keating defended his government’s record and pointed to substantial Labor achievements such as the establishment of Medicare and superannuation.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi labelled comments made by Mr Keating about Mr Bandt as “disgusting” and “disappointing”.

Senator Faruqi came to the defence of her leader and supported his comments about the characterisation that Labor has become more “neoliberal” over time.

“I think the attacks on Adam’s character like this are frankly pretty disgusting and disappointing,” she told the ABC on Thursday.

“There is no doubt that over the last three or four decades Labor have adopted neoliberalism.”