Keane was born on 14 February 1881 in Beechworth, Victoria, the fourth child of Hanorah (née O'Sullivan) and Timothy Keane.[1] His parents were Irish Catholic immigrants – his mother was born in County Tipperary and his father, a police constable, in County Kerry.[2] He possessed papers showing that his father had served with the Union in the American Civil War under the name "Timothy Kane", and had received a commendation for his role in the Battle of Sailor's Creek.[3]
In 1918, Keane became an officeholder in the Victorian Railways Union. In 1925 he resigned from the public service to take up a paid position as state secretary and national secretary of the Australian Railways Union (ARU).[2] At the time the ARU was the largest union in Victoria, with over 20,000 members.[1] Keane supported industrial unionism and unsuccessfully advocated for the ARU to merge with the Australian Workers' Union (AWU). He was vice-president of the Commonwealth Council of Federated Unions and later served on the general arbitration committee of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU).[2]
In October 1941 Keane was appointed Minister for Trade and Customs and Vice-President of the Executive Council in the first Curtin Ministry and was responsible for administering wartime rationing and price controls. In 1946 he travelled to the United States to terminate Australia's Lend-Lease arrangements.[1] While leaving the Waldorf Astoria in New York in March 1946, Keane was "wildly cheered" by "hundreds of celebrity-conscious New Yorkers" who mistook him for Winston Churchill, who was also staying at the hotel. He subsequently quipped that "I somehow wish I had been smoking a cigar".[4]
Keane died at a hospital in Washington, D.C., on 26 April 1946, aged 65. He had collapsed earlier in the day at the Australian embassy due to heart trouble, which was attributed to over-work. He had taken over the administration of the embassy while awaiting the arrival of the new ambassador, Norman Makin.[5]
Personal life
In 1909, Keane married Ruby Thorne, a milliner, with whom he had two daughters and a son. He was widowed in 1923 and remarried in 1940 to Millicent Dunn, a typist, with whom he had another daughter.[2]
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