Paul Keating Quotes
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The great curse of modern political life is incrementalism.
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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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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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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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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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The Labor Party is a party of conviction. The Liberal Party is a party of convenience.
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If you are sitting on the title of any block of land in New South Wales you can bet an Aboriginal person at some stage was dispossessed of it.
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One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
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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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The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together.
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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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In the end, rational policy is always good.
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When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.
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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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I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out.
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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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The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
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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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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?