The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia... I always thought Malcolm would be around a lot longer. I must say, I wished he had been.
The great thing about music is that whatever you're into, you see new possibilities.
Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers.
Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for terrorism.
The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate.
The first film I remember seeing was Bambi. It has stayed with me because it was so sad.
I know people are looking at whats happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.
As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along.
The cartoon absolutely captures something that acres and acres of copy can't. And even photographs can't.
Including everyone in the economic, wealth-creating life of the nation is today the best way for Labor (Australian Labor Party) to meet its twin goals of raising national prosperity and creating a fair and decent society.
Our nation is well equipped to make the transition. We have an abundance of natural resources like wind, natural gas, solar and geothermal.
I'm angry and I understand why Australians paying mortgages are angry.
I don't rule out the possibility of legislating a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, a market-based mechanism.
We encourage China to engage as a good global citizen and we are clear-eyed about where differences do lie.
Over the Christmas period, I spent time with both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and you listen to stories and tales of how hard it can be when it's really hard, and I think we easily all talk ourselves into the proposition that it's never been as hard as this. Well it's been hard in the past. It's been really hard. So you keep doing it and, the more you do it, the more you gain strength and confidence that you can do it.
The global economic outlook remains fragile and uncertain. Global economic imbalances persist and we must address them or risk future instability.
We see community organizations as major service providers and economic drivers rather than as recipients or distributors of charity, and coordinators of volunteers. Today they constitute what's referred to as 'the social economy'.
Here in Australia we do get impacted by global economic events. But we should have some confidence that our economy has got strong underlying fundamentals.
