37 Paul Keating Quotes on Politics

Paul Keating quotes on politics

1. From this day onwards, Howard will wear his leadership like a crown of thorns, and in the parliament I'll do everything to crucify him.

2. If this Government cannot get the adjustment, get manufacturing going again, and keep moderate wage outcomes and a sensible economic policy, then Australia is basically done for. We will end up being a third rate economy... a banana republic.

3. Where members opposite all come a gutser is in the fact that members on this side all think that we were born to rule you. It has been ingrained in me from childhood to think that my mission in life is to run you, and the Prime Minister (Mr Hawke) thinks that his mission in life is to run you. In fact, the labour movement-that is, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the great industrial labour movement of Australia-thinks that its mission in life is to run you.

4. A dog returning to his vomit

5. The Placido Domingo of Australian politics.

7. I would forbid him going going to the Senate, to account to this unrepresentative swill over there...

8. This is the sweetest victory of all. This is a victory for the true believers; the people who, in difficult times, have kept the faith.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.

16. [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?

17. Between 1999 and 2004 there was no investment in Australia, it all went into housing and consumption all borrowed on the current account. When Peter Costello runs around saying, 'Oh we've paid off the debt,' it's like the pea and thimble trick. The Government debt or the massive private debt abroad? It's continuing to grow.

18. The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on... (he is) still there araldited to the seat.

20. The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together

21. 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.

31. Like an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades.

33. Hewson: I ask the Prime Minister: if you are so confident about your view of Fightback, why will you not call an early election? Keating: The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly. There has to be a bit of sport in this for all of us. In the psychological battle stakes, we are stripped down and ready to go. I want to see those ashen-faced performances; I want more of them. I want to be encouraged. I want to see you squirm out of this load of rubbish over a number of months. There will be no easy execution for you. You have perpetrated one of the great mischiefs on the Australian public with this thing, trying to rip away our social wage, trying to rip away the Australian values which we built in our society for over a century.

34. I was implying that the Honourable Member for Wentworth was like a lizard on a rock - alive, but looking dead.

35. This is the sort of little-boy, stamp your foot stuff which comes from a financial yuppie when you shoe him into parliament.

38. Can a souffle rise twice?

39. I suppose that the honourable gentleman's hair, like his intellect, will recede into the darkness.

40. The Leader of the Opposition is more to be pitied than despised, the poor old thing. The Liberal Party ought to put him down like a faithful dog because he is of no use to it and of no use to the nation.

41. We're not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos.

42. It is the first time the Honourable Gentleman has got out from under the sunlamp.

43. He, as Foreign Minister, was swanning around the United States of America with Shirley MacLaine or trying to crash one of Ted Kennedy's parties...and he was trying to play statesman...while he swanned around, and then he made a cowardly attack upon the former Prime Minister before slinking back into his cabinet.

44. You've been in the dye pot again, Andrew.

45. [Most politicians have] brains like sparrows' nests - all shit and sticks.

46. What we have got is a dead carcass, swinging in the breeze, but nobody will cut it down to replace him.

47. The principle saboteur, the man with the cheap fistful of dollars.

49. I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not slither out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot.

50. Soon we will be at the stage where he will be offering us a free set of steak knives.

52. I'm not running a seminar for dullards on the other side.

53. ...votes for coalition members who have always been cheats, cheats, cheats and will always be cheats, cheats, cheats and will always defend cheats, cheats, cheats..

54. You were heard in silence, so some of you scumbags on the front bench should wait a minute until you hear the responses from me.

55. The Leader of the Opposition hurls all sorts of abuse at me, and all through question time those pansies over there want retractions of the things we've said about them. They are a bunch of nobodies going nowhere.

59. ...their existense is putrid. It is absolutely putrid.

60. Every now and then you have to flick the switch to vaudeville.