As I'm lying there at my funeral I would hope to hear somebody say, “Look, he's still moving!

Businessmen are always trying to advance their business interests, but they are not running for Prime Minister.

Brian Burke as we now know was the most influential person in the West Australian Labor Party, if you could attract him, you're in business.

You know in politics you are dealing in the realm of choices. You don't always have clear-cut decision between a thoroughly principled position and a thoroughly unprincipled one. You're making snap decisions with paucity of information, generally trying to do the best that you can, but you will make errors, and sometimes it's a decision between a bad and a worse alternative. It has to be done, because we need to order our society, and of politics it can literally be said: Bad job, but someone's got to do it.

When you're looking for votes, you are looking for votes from everybody, particularly the powerful.

Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia.

As I'm lying there at my funeral I would hope to hear somebody say, “Look, he's still moving!