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.
The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together.
One tires of combat, although I can still throw a punch, you know.
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.
Good economics is good politics.
I try to use the Australian idiom to its maximum advantage.
When the Berlin Wall came down the Americans cried, 'Victory,' and walked off the field.
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.
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.
Well, frenetic activity in the end suiting journos, running at the behest of little press secretaries does not pay off.
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.
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.
If one takes pride in one's craft, you won't let a good thing die. Risking it through not pushing hard enough is not a humility.
In the end, rational policy is always good.
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.
The G7, just a European centric show, an Atlantic show, is fundamentally finished.
You see, before I became prime minister, the Australian prime minister only attended ever two meetings in the world: the British Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the South Pacific Forum.
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.
The United States being in Asia is unambiguously a good thing for the region.
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?
Nobody wants to have in their CV in the upper echelons of the American economic family that they nationalised major banks.
