Paul Keating Quotes
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The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.
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If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours.
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Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.
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John Howard turned the prime ministership into something like a state police minister. He's at the scene of every crime, twice a day on radio, the guy did no thinking.
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One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
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The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
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For John Howard to get to any high moral ground he would have to first climb out of the volcanic hole he's dug for himself over the last decade. You know, it's like one of those deep diamond mined holes in South Africa, you know, they're about a mile underground. He'd have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium, let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd.
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He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up
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You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.
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You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum.
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The great changes in civilisation and society have been wrought by deeply held beliefs and passion rather than by a process of rational deduction.
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I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
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If this Government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for. We will end up being a third rate economy... a banana republic.
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You see, psychologically, Australia must understand it has to live in the region around it. Australia must find its security in Asia; it cannot find its security from Asia.
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One is left with the thought that given the way we now abuse the ocean and abuse the climate that we are heading towards our own iceberg, which is looming on the horizon. It's not visible yet but it certainly exists there and it won't be my generation that has to deal with the fact that the world is not bountiful forever, that the ocean and the atmosphere are not free goods to be abused, that will have to feed these vast populations. That will be your generation.
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I think the Australian people are very conscientious. During the 1980s and 1990s we proved they will respond conscientiously to necessary reforms. They mightn't like them but they'll accept them. But reforms have to be presented in a digestible format.
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The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together.
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Politicians come in three varieties: straight men, fixers, and maddies.
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Well, Australians should speak for the national interests of Australia, and whatever role former Australian prime ministers may have, one of the things you do is speak frankly about the country as you see the country's best interests, you know?
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In the end, the key ingredient for public life is imagination. You imagine something better, you try to bring the people with you.
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The Labor Party is not going to profit from having these proven unsuccessful people around who are frightened of their own shadow and won't get out of bed in the morning unless they've had a focus group report to tell them which side of bed to get out.
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Leadership is not about being nice. it's about being right and being strong
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Australian Reserve Bank Governor MacFarlane said recently when Paul Volcker broke the back of American inflation it's regarded as the policy triumph of the Western world. When I broke the back of Australian inflation they say, "Oh, you're the fellow that put the interest rates up." Am I not the same fellow that gave them the 15 years of good growth and high wealth that came from it?
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A familiar question for Australians is how much we are a product of our circumstances, and how much we are what we have made ourselves to be. In truth, by the act of migration the country was made: by that voluntary act and by the emigrants' ambitions it was built.