Annita van Iersel

Annita Keating (born 5 October 1948) is the estranged wife of the former Prime Minister of Australia, Paul Keating.

Anna Johanna Maria van Iersel was born into a devout Roman Catholic family in Oisterwijk, Nord Brabant, Netherlands in 1948. After studying languages in Paris and London, she gained employment with KLM as a flight attendant. Later, while working with Alitalia, she met an aspiring young politician named Paul Keating. They married on 17 January 1975 and raised four children. Eventually Annita's parents joined her in Australia.

She was a generous and supportive spouse while her husband transformed the Australian economy and financial system as Federal Treasurer in Bob Hawke's ministry between 1983 and 1991. She proved a gracious 'First Lady' while he was Prime Minister between 1991 and 1996. His and Annita's children spent some of their teenage years in The Lodge, the Prime Minister's official residence in Canberra. Intelligent, elegant and widely-travelled, her command of five languages also proved a valuable diplomatic asset, especially in support of Sydney's bid for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games.

In 1998, Annita and her husband of 23 years separated. In the same year she enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts course, majoring in photography, at the National School of Arts at Darlinghurst, Sydney. Despite intrusive media attention, she graduated in 2001. Although a reluctant public figure, Annita Keating van Iersel is now very much an Australian in her own right and forging an individual artistic career. In March 2008 she was scheduled to exhibit a series of paintings - oils on Belgian linen - that she created in her studio on the Hawkesbury River. [Tony Wright, "Former PM's wife faces life with easel", The Age, 20 March 2008]

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