Keating takes another dig at Hawke

A bitter spat between Paul Keating and Bob Hawke over who was most responsible for the success of Labor in the late 1980s shows no signs of abatement.

The latest saga, which has been running for nearly 30 years, involves Mr Hawke's appearance on ABC Television's Australian Story on Monday night and contributions by cabinet colleagues of the time.

Mr Keating takes aim at Gareth Evans, Ralph Willis and Kim Beazley for their rosy view of Mr Hawke's prime ministership.

He also dismisses as a "tawdry hagiography" a book written by Mr Hawke's wife Blanche d'Alpuget in 2010.

"As he often does, he uses relatives, friends and colleagues to do the rebutting for him," Mr Keating writes of Mr Hawke in The Australian on Tuesday.

Mr Keating argues Mr Hawke was a lucky prime minister as well as a good one.

But he uses published accounts of the time, including by Ms d'Alpuget, to back his argument that Mr Hawke was paralysed by inertia in the years following a traumatic personal issue involving his daughter in 1984.

Mr Keating says no word would have been uttered by him about those "vanishing" years, had Mr Hawke not distorted history in his own memoir.

"But Bob, as he often does, overdid it - he baited me one time too often.

"And no apologia by his mates, no matter how well meant or sentimental, can change the truth that obtained at the core of his governments management."