Australian Prime Minister Quotes

This stated, “Dear Mr. Prime Minister, I am delighted by the decision of your government to provide an infantry battalion for service in South Vietnam at the request of the Government of South Vietnam” The simple fact about this was that no such request was ever received by the Australian Government.

On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight from London reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished. No trace of the poor man was ever seen again. This seemed doubly astounding to me – first that Australia could just lose a Prime Minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.

Tackling these tasks in the order we receive them is behaving as if the squeaky wheel immediately deserves the grease. But, as Australian prime minister Bob Hawke duly noted, “The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.

Former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, an astute China watcher, has described the country’s explosion as “the English Industrial Revolution and the global information revolution combusting simultaneously and compressed into not 300 years, but 30.”28

The two often sheltered from air raids in the room of another resident, Australian prime minister Menzies, whom Pamela had come to know well because of her connection to the Churchills. Menzies occupied a large suite on the Dorchester’s much-coveted first floor. The women spent nights on mattresses laid out in its windowless entry alcove. Now

There were parts of the book that made me cringe – the stuff about his family and how much he loved his wife was all a bit saccharine for my tastes. Some of the writing was overly flowery. But I think possibly Australians are a bit more reserved with this stuff (a bit more British) than Americans and what makes us cringe might well seem quite endearing in the US. 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 텔 - KrTop "코리아탑" 〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓〓 All the same, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a candidate for US President did not have to declare themselves Christian to have any hope of being elected? As a nation that has had at least one Agnostic Prime Minister (Bob Hawke – although, as the joke went, that was only because Bob wasn’t sure if he was God or not) it seems insane the obsession that religion is in American politics. For a country that likes a personal relationship with God the US certainly does like that personal relationship to be as public as possible.

At the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in early July Trump wanted to talk with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull. In violation of security rules he invited Turnbull into his Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Only those with the highest U.S. security clearances for Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information were allowed in the SCIF. It was an absolute rule, intended to prevent someone planting listening devices. This facility, a large steel room, had to be torn down after the meeting.

constant marking down of her performance is wildly at odds with the reality of the minority government. Despite the government’s wafer-thin margin, the parliament is remarkably stable; but it’s depicted as though we are living through the last days of Rome. Gillard is implementing reforms and the parliament has passed a record amount of legislation—around 180 bills to date—but the press talks endlessly of a government close to collapse. Australia is economically robust compared to faltering international economies, but you’d be forgiven for thinking the Australian economy is on the point of disintegration. The media’s primary focus is on personalities and politics, not policies or the running of the country.

Laura tingle: "So it's not jut that we see Gillard as a backstabber who brought down an elected prime minister, it is that we see her as the very reason we have minority government. Gillard has become the embodiment of a crushing number of uncertainties and disappointed expectations, both about politics and Australia's future, which makes voters uncomfortable -and in some cases angry.

While he was in the neighbourhood he went to New York for the – surely redundant by now – ceremonial visit of the next prime minister to Rupert Murdoch. Back home in the Spectator Australia he laid it on thick again: “Along with the commander of the First AIF, Sir John Monash, and the penicillin inventor, Lord Florey, he is one of the Australians who have made the most difference in the world.

The Worst Man in Australia Australians love The Simpsons, except, naturally, the episode where the family goes there. That episode was condemned in the Australian parliament, which is a Hooters, by the way. They didn’t object to us saying the Australian penal system involved kicking offenders with a giant boot, or that their prime minister’s office was an inner tube in a pond. Nope. What they didn’t like was our cast’s attempt at doing an Australian accent. Mind you, the true Australian accent is semi-incomprehensible

Former Prime Minister of Australia John Howard wrote in the New York Times in 2013, “[T]here is a wide consensus that our 1996 reforms not only reduced the gun-related homicide rate, but also the suicide rate. The Australian Institute of Criminology found that gun-related murders and suicides fell sharply after 1996.”2 But the impact of Australia’s gun buyback in 1996–97 is a lot less obvious than most might think. The buyback resulted in more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, reducing gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But since then there has been a steady increase in the number of privately owned guns. By 2010, the total number of privately owned guns was back to the 1996 level.

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European.

Carlton Church: Australia in Doubt on Building Nuclear Plant With the continuous trend of nuclear proliferation, the nuclear-free Australia is in critical dilemma on whether to start the industry in the country or not. On one end of the coin, the negative effects of nuclear generation will surely cause skepticisms and complaints. On the other side, nuclear fuel industry is worth exploring. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has been reserved when it comes to nuclear talks but he did admit that “Australia should ‘look closely’ at expanding its role in the global nuclear energy industry, including leasing fuel rods to other countries and then storing the waste afterwards”. South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill set up a royal commission in March to undertake an independent investigation into the state’s participation in the nuclear fuel cycle. Carlton Church International, non-profit organization campaigning against nuclear use, says there is no need for Australia to venture into nuclear turmoil as they already have an extensive, low cost coal and natural gas reserves. Other critics has also seconded this motion as it is known that even Turnbull has pointed out that the country has plentiful access to coal, gas, wind and solar sources. During an interview, he also stated, “I’m not talking about the politics. We’ve got so much other affordable sources of energy, not just fossil fuel like coal and gas but also wind, solar. The ability to store energy is getting better all the time, and that’s very important for intermittent sources of energy, particularly wind and solar. But playing that part in the nuclear fuel cycle I think is something that is worth looking at closely”. A survey was also conducted among random people and a lot of them have been reluctant about the nuclear issue. Some fear that the Fukushima Daichii Incident would happen, knowing the extent of the damage it has caused even to those living in Tokyo, Japan. Another review also stated, “We only have to look at the Fukushima disaster in Japan to be reminded of the health, social and economic impacts of a nuclear accident, and to see that this is not a safe option for Australians.” According to further studies by analysts, 25 nuclear reactors can be built around Australia producing a third of the country’s electricity by 2050. But it also found nuclear power would be much more expensive to produce than coal-fired power if a price was not put on carbon dioxide emissions. Greenpeace dismissed nuclear power as “an expensive distraction from the real solutions to climate change, like solar and wind power”. - See more at: carltonchurchreview.blogspot

On 1 June 1910, the four Colonies of Natal, Transvaal, the Cape and the Orange Free State – previously autonomous if not independent – became constituents of a larger entity, known officially as the Union of South Africa. There would be a new, whites-only parliament, with a Prime Minister and cabinet working under the (nominal) supervision of a Governor-General sent out from London. Superficially, the Union in South Africa followed the pattern laid down by other British dominions. In 1867 the different provinces of Canada came together and formed a central parliament. In 1900 the Australian colonies did likewise. The South African case, however, differed in one crucial respect from its predecessors. At the time of the Union, the white settlers were very far from being a majority in a land they claimed as their own.

Speaking at the end of the summit, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said countries will hold each other accountable by monitoring implementation of their commitments to boost growth. The G-20, criticized in recent years as being all talk and no action, was urged to deliver measurable results this year. Perhaps in response, the group said the International Monetary Fund will also play a role in monitoring progress and estimating the economic benefits of the growth plan. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde dismissed concerns that countries might fudge their growth figures, saying the monitoring is a thorough and detailed process. “We’ll make sure they keep their feet to the fire,” she said. The G-20 communique says that if the $2 trillion initiative is fully implemented, it will lift global GDP by 2.1 percent above expected levels by 2018 and create millions of jobs.

In 2011, when then prime minister Julia Gillard based her opposition to the legal recognition of gay marriage in Australia on her strident belief in the traditional definition of marriage, we could all be forgiven for not knowing exactly which tradition she meant. Was it the tradition of marriage as a contract made between parents to connect kinship groups and reinforce economic and political power? Was it the tradition of marriage as a means to extend family influence into different geographical territories? Was it marriage as a tool for class consolidation or mobility? Was it marriage as a vehicle for women to escape their status as the property of their fathers to become instead the proprty of their husbands? Or was she referring to the tradition of marriage as cemented relatively recently in Australian legalese, to define marriage by what it is not? That is, it is not something that happens bteween a brother and a sister (though it can happen between cousins, or uncle and niece), nor a decision arrived at by force (though what constitutes 'force' is not defined), and it is definitely not the result of a same-sex couple eloping to a more liberal state for a party and a bogus piece of paper. Nevertheless, w all know that every marriage is different, and none can wholly be summed up be a sntence-long definition.

more stiffly endorsed by Prime Minister Lyons, who expressed support for free speech to the extent that people didn’t use it to foment discontent.

For the next month, reports of CIA activities in Australia dominated the front pages of several Australian newspapers. Using Chris’s disclosure of CIA tampering in Australia as a springboard, the newspapers initiated investigative series which suggested that the ouster of Prime Minister Whitlam might have been orchestrated by the American intelligence service, and there were fresh reports almost daily of different alleged CIA manipulations of political, economic and labor affairs in the country. None of the Australian journalists managed to discover the “deception” that Chris had alluded to—the Rhyolite-Argus deception. Nevertheless, the close Australian–American alliance that had been cemented in World War II was suddenly buffeted by a political tornado, and the incident touched off day after day of stormy sessions in the Australian parliament. There were demands for a complete investigation of the CIA’s role in Australia. But the government managed to ride out the storm. It simply remained aloof from the crisis, refusing to respond to the allegations and biding its time until they subsided.

An upset victory in 1972 by the Australian Labour Party and the election of Gough Whitlam as prime minister sent jitters through the CIA. The agency feared that a left-leaning government in Australia might reveal the function of the bases or, worse, abrogate the agreement and close down the facilities. Because of these fears and apprehension that the KGB might find it easy to penetrate a labor government, the CIA decided to limit the information it made available to the Australian Security and Intelligence Service, the Australian CIA. To the American CIA, there were high stakes involved in the bases, and not surprisingly, it meant to keep them. Despite professions of loyalty from Whitlam to the American-Australian alliance, apprehension about an anti-U.S. shift in Australian policy continued to grow within the Central Intelligence Agency. And in the minds of certain officials within the CIA, these fears were soon validated. One of Whitlam’s first acts after becoming prime minister was to tweak the United States by withdrawing Australian troops from Vietnam, and in 1973 he publicly denounced the American bombing of Hanoi, enraging President Nixon. Meanwhile, strident

The Australian union movement called an 'illegal' general strike in 1976, when Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser's government was trying to destroy our embryonic universal healthcare system. That strike brought the country to a standstill. Fraser backed down, and what became Medicare remains. The same people who disagree [with strike action] may also want to reflect on this the next time they enjoy a leisurely weekend, or are saved from an accident by workplace safety standards, or knock off work after an eight-hour shift. Union members won all these conditions in campaigns that were deemed 'illegal' industrial actiona at the time. These union members built the living standards we all enjoy. They should be celebrated and thanked for their bravery and sacrifices, not condemned and renounced.

[Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard] would not schedule any Cabinet meetings in the evening because he'd previously observed as a minister that any meeting after dinner and a couple of glasses of wine was an 'inefficient use of time'. ... Predictable? Most of the time, yes. But in Howard's view, a regular timetable was also a courtesy, as much for other people's benefit as his own. For his security detail, younger men and women who often had children. For his staff, who regularly had to be reminded to take a lunchbreak. And also for his ministers, obliged to attend endless public functions.

So how do we ease our subconscious mind, which inconveniently revives our old regrets, past grievances and midnight 'staircase wit'? "I think there is a discipline about going to sleep and I don't know if it works more generally for people, but for me, it's got two parts to it," [former Australian Prime Minister] Rudd says. The first is to distinguish the things you can and cannot control, to reconcile them and hopefully stop your mind returning automatically to those things that are, as Rudd says, "outside your purchase".

So, in [former Australian Prime Minister] Rudd's words, the process is first to engage with the person who done you wrong, second to set the record straight, third to forgive, and then fourth to stick it in the Forgettory. If you don't, then all you are left with is 'a bucket of simmering hatreds' that stop you getting to sleep, he says.

The Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, issued a formal apology to the indigenous people of Australia today in 2008, it was for the forced removal of their children, often referred to as the Stolen Generations, which did not stop until the 1960s

wish you could do something about the Australian tobacco industry,’ said the Prime Minister gloomily, grinding the malodorous butt out in the ashtray.

John Howard performed a triple reverse somersault on his promise to never, ever introduce a GST under a government he led, and was met with no such opprobrium. Unlike Gillard, he consistently lied to the Australian people about his intentions.

I see prime ministers and ministers and so on going to see Rupert [Murdoch] every time they go to Washington,’ he tells me. ‘The big problem for them is: who do you see first—the President or Rupert? I’m not in that brigade. I am available; I am here. I am representing a section of the Australian people as a result of their vote. I am not in the game of believing that empire must be paid obeisance—or else.

Yet if the Howard years changed little in the law, they had a huge effect on the culture. Most Australians certainly became wealthier, but in the process they became more materialistic and self-centred. Howard constantly held up the ideal of mateship, but in practice he was much more concerned with individuals taking responsibility for themselves than in fostering genuine co-operation within communities, let alone in a wider international context. Indeed, much of his political success derived from setting groups against each other, from bolstering fear and loathing.

Maintain your rage and your enthusiasm.

Danny Casolaro believed the Octopus responsible for criminal conspiracies which, linked, formed a virtual history of intelligence double dealing from 1950 to the present. These events, in Casolaro’s view, included the ousters of US President Richard Nixon, Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, the Shah of Iran, and the murders of Chilean President Allende, and, of course, of President John F. Kennedy. Casolaro saw the Octopus’ tentacles entwined throughout the creation of the Golden Triangle and Latin America drug trade, the Cuban Bay of Pigs debacle, the October Surprise, the BCCI banking scandal, and, almost as an afterthought, the theft of PROMIS software.

that since both the British policeman and the Nazi storm trooper wore a uniform, the British policeman was a brute. It is one of the chief characteristics of modern rhetoric, designed not so much to find the truth as (in the words of former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam) to ‘maintain your rage.