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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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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I think Australia has to be a country which has the 'Welcome' sign out.
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The lesson of the Federation should be that the lesson is over. Australia must have a new idea of itself. We have to strike out in a new direction, in a new way, armed with our own self-regard, our own confidence and fully appreciating our own uniqueness. All other roads will lead us into the shadow of great powers.
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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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In the end, rational policy is always good.
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I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.
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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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If there was a university degree for greed, you cunts would all get first-class honours.
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I think leadership's always been about two main things: imagination and courage.
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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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You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.
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Australia without the Irish would be unthinkable... unimaginable... unspeakable.
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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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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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Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?
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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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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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When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.
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The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.
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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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The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
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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 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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The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together.
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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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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 rise of China is one of the great events of all economic and human history, and I think this will be overwhelmingly a positive thing for the region and the world.
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Related Authors
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Bob Hawke Former Prime Minister of Australia -
John Howard Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Tony Abbott Prime Minister of Australia -
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Gough Whitlam Former Prime Minister of Australia -
John Hewson Former Member of the Australian Parliament -
Mark Latham Former Australian Federal MP -
Margaret Whitlam Author -
Malcolm Turnbull Member of the Australian Parliament -
Malcolm Fraser Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Julia Gillard Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Joe Hockey Member of the Australian Parliament -
Don Watson Author -
Robert Menzies Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Alexander Downer Former Member of the Australian Parliament -
Bronwyn Bishop Member of the Australian House of Representatives -
Bill Shorten Australian Federal MP -
Kevin Rudd Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Ben Chifley Former Prime Minister of Australia -
Peter Costello Former Member of the Australian House of Representatives