Paul Keating Quotes
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No choice we can make as a nation lies between our history and our geography. We can hardly change either of them. They are immutable. The only choice we can make as a nation is the choice about our future.
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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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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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Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.
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In the end it's the big picture which changes nations and whatever our opponents may say, Australia's changed inexorably for good, for the better.
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The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.
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One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
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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.
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You know, in the WikiLeaks cables, the Chinese discovered that Kevin Rudd was urging the Americans to keep the military option open against them. This is hardly a friendly gesture.
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I've always held the view that great states need strategic space. I mean, George Washington took his space from George III. Britain took it from just about everybody. Russia took all of Eastern Europe. Germany's taken it from everywhere they can, and China will want its space too.
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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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Think of one structural change in 11 years he made, other than being just doling out money in the annual Budget? And don't say the GST because Howard did that and it wasn't a structural change anyway, just a change in the tax system. This is a low flying person.
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In the end, rational policy is always good.
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We will not adopt the fantastic hypocrisy of modern conservatism which preaches the values of families and communities, while conducting a direct assault on them through reduced wages and conditions and job security.
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I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out.
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The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
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We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases and the alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice. And our failure to imagine that these things could be done to us.
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When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.
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Anybody who achieves what Malcolm Fraser achieved in his life deserves respect as a quite extraordinary Australian.
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The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.
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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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Good economics is good politics.