Former prime ministers in history war

Former prime ministers Paul Keating and John Howard are having a spat over the history of economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s in newspaper pages.

Paul Keating (pic) has accused John Howard of "rewriting history" over historical economic reforms. (AAP)

Former prime minister Paul Keating has taken John Howard to task for "rewriting history" over economic reforms in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mr Howard said in an opinion piece for the Financial Review on Monday that many economic reforms achieved under the Hawke and Keating Labor governments got up because of opposition support.

Writing in the same pages on Tuesday, Mr Keating said: "nothing could be further from the truth".