Some more Keatingisms

[Jovial Monk]

> Paul Keating once called Adelaide "Dubbo with poofters".
: > (Not sure of the exact wording...)
:
: Being attacked by the Member for XXX is like being savaged by a dead sheep
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:

[Must add a Whitlamism here: Scene HoR, a Country Party member speaking "I am a country member. . ." Whitlam "We remember"]

Mr Keating has again criticised the Senate, after once describing it as "unrepresentative swill"

On Prime Minister John Howard:

"The little desiccated coconut is under pressure and he is attacking anything he can get his hands on"

"For Mr Howard to get to the high moral ground, he would first need to climb out of the volcanic hole he had dug for himself over the last decade. It is like one of those diamond mine holes in South Africa. They are about a mile underground. He would have to come a mile up to get to even equilibrium let alone have any contest in morality with Kevin Rudd."

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

"He's wound up like a thousand day clock..."

"...the brain-damaged Leader of the Opposition..."

(Of his 1986 leadership) "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."

"He is the greatest job and investment destroyer since the bubonic plague."

"But I will never get to the stage of wanting to lead the nation standing in front of the mirror each morning clipping the eyebrows here and clipping the eyebrows there with Janette and the kids: It's like 'Spot the eyebrows'."

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

"He has more hide than a team of elephants."

"I do not want to hear any mealymouthed talk from the Member for Benelong."

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

"Come in sucker."

On Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello:

"The thing about poor old Costello is he is all tip and no iceberg. He can throw a punch across the parliament but the bloke he should be throwing a punch to is Howard, but of course he doesn't have the ticker for it."

"He has now been treasurer for 11 years. The old coconut is still there araldited to the seat. The treasurer works on the smart quips but when it comes to staring down the prime minister in his office he always leaves disappointed. He never gets the sword out."

Via Wikiquote

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.
Speaking to John Laws on Radio 2UE, May 14, 1986.

A dog returning to his vomit
Referring to Wilson Tuckey, 1990, after Tuckey repeatedly called out the name "Christine" in Parliament.

The Placido Domingo of Australian politics.
Self description, based on the assessment that Domingo's performances are "sometimes great, and sometimes not great, but always good". Press Gallery Christmas dinner, 1991.

It was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the diseases. 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 these things being done to us.
1992 The Redfern Speech, launching International Year of Indigenous Peoples

I would forbid him going going to the Senate, to account to this unrepresentative swill over there...
1993 Parliamentary speech referring to the Senate, in contrast to the House of Representatives.

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.
1993 election victory speech.

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.
Address to the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of parliament of the Republic of Ireland, 20 September, 1993.

Don’t ask me any more questions about Mahathir. I couldn’t care less frankly whether he comes to Seattle or not next year. APEC is bigger than all of us – Australia, the United States, Malaysia, Mahathir – or any other recalcitrants.
Informal comment to the media at Seattle Airport, 22 November 1993.

We will not adopt the fantastic hypocrisy of modern conservatism which preaches the values of families and communities, while conducting a direct assault on them through reduced wages and conditions and job security.
Election campaign launch, February 14, 1996.

By the year 2000 we should be able to say that we have learned to live securely, in peace and mutual prosperity among our Asian and Pacific neighbours. We will not be cut off from our British and European cultures and traditions or from those economies. On the contrary, the more engaged we are economically and politically with the region around us, the more value and relevance we bring to those old relationships. Far from putting our identity at risk, our relationships with the region will energise it.
Election campaign launch, February 14, 1996.

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.
Concession Speech, March 2, 1996.

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.
"A Prospect of Europe", 1997 speech at the University of New South Wales.

You just can't have a position where some pumped up bunyip potentate dismisses an elected government.
In reference to former Governor-General John Kerr. The Great Crash for The World Today book launch, 9 November, 2005.

[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?
7:30 Report interview, May 8, 2006

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.
7:30 Report interview, May 8, 2006

The fact is Burke is smarter than two thirds of the Western Australian Labor Party rolled together
Referring to disgraced former Western Australia Premier Brian Burke, ABC Radio interview, March 5, 2007.

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.
ABC Radio interview, March 5, 2007.

He's a pre-Copernican obscurantist.
Referring to Prime Minister John Howard's attitude to industrial relations. ABC Radio interview, May 1, 2007.

Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?
Referring to Howard Government Minister Joe Hockey, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

He’s the greatest L plater of all time.
Referring to Treasurer Peter Costello, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

[edit] Unsourced
The accounts do show that Australia is in a recession. The most important thing about that is, is that this is the recession that Australia had to have.
Announcing Australia was in recession, late 1990

Economic racism.
On tariffs.

I only had one shot in the locker and I fired it.
After a failed leadership challenge against Bob Hawke.

Get a job. Do some work like the rest of us.
To a student protestor, 1995.

We're going to bolt it home.
Assessment of his chances at the 1996 election.

I like the Queen... and I think she liked me.
In response to the controversy caused when Keating placed his hand on Queen Elizabeth II's back during her 1992 Australian tour.

Like an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades.
Description of Malcolm Fraser. [hahahaha what a perfect description, esp 1975-83)

An abacus gone feral.
Description of John Hewson, then leader of the Australian Liberal Party (1993)

Hewson: Why won't you call an early election? Keating: The answer is, mate, because I want to do you slowly.

I was implying that the Honourable Member for Wentworth was like a lizard on a rock – alive, but looking dead.
On John Hewson.

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

(His performance) is like being flogged with a warm lettuce.
On John Hewson

I'd put him in the same class as the rest of them: mediocrity.
On John Hewson

Can a soufflé rise twice?
On the second (1989) attempt by Andrew Peacock to gain the Liberal leadership.

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

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.
On Andrew Peacock

We're not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos.
On Andrew Peacock

It is the first time the Honourable Gentleman has got out from under the sunlamp.
On Andrew Peacock

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.
On Andrew Peacock

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

[Most politicians have] brains like sparrows' nests - all shit and sticks.
As quoted by Peter Botsman in a column in The Australian, July 3 2002

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

You boxhead you wouldn’t know. You are flat out counting past ten.
On Liberal MP Wilson Tuckey

I'm not running a seminar for dullards on the other side.
On the Liberal Party

...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..
On the Liberal Party

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.

You had an important place in Australian society on the ABC and you gave it up to be a pop star...with a big cheque...and now you're on to this sort of stuff. That shows what a 24 carat pissant you are, Richard, that's for sure.
To journalist Richard Carleton

... you can't write a cheque for taste.
Sydney is the only place to live in Australia – the rest is camping out.

...their existense is putrid. It is absolutely putrid.
On the National Party

[JWFrogen]

I wish I had been around at the time, there are some classics in there.

Nothing beat's Mark Latham's "a conga line of suck holes" however.

[Jovial Monk]

hehehehe yup that was a goody.

On Peacock entering the HoR after being elected Leader a second time "but the question before the House is, will this souffle rise a second time?"

[Aussie]

Quite a few repetitions in the OP, Monk. Wanna tidy it up?

[Jovial Monk]

WTF is an OP, Dad?

[annielaurie]

Um, original poster ... thread starter ... that means you, Jm ...

Haha

[Jovial Monk]

Well, Dad should say so! I never heard of OP in relation to forums!

yeah yeah, will have a look at it and tidy up a bit later. OK Dad?

[Jovial Monk]

I had QT on the computer on the last sitting day of the dying Howard govt.

Feelings were running high, Howard, Costello Rudd were absolutely TEARING into each other. Finally, when Rudd looked like winning the debate Abbot, Manager govt Business, moved that the House adjourn--which the House then immediately does, no debate at all.

Apparently there were some US congressmen in the Visitors Gallery. They were led away rather shell shocked

Fortunate for them they were not in the House when Keating was firing off his vicious but accurate insults!

[JWFrogen]

One of my favorates is Alexander Downer's "I was the Leader of the Opposition, I was enormously
popular. I only hope that Mr Rudd suffers the same fate that I did."

[JWFrogen]

Or Peter Costello on the thought of a Labor government.

"That is enough to put me into a cold sweat. If I look tired it is because I have thought of that in the middle of the night."