Quotes About Australia

This is a very practical discussion about the fact that one of the largest coal companies in the world, Adani, wants to build one of the, develop one of the largest coal mines in Australia in this region of Australia. And if they get the green light to do that, that will secure the economic future of people in Rockhampton, and people in central Queensland. It will secure their jobs in the future, and that's what they're concerned about.

People turned around and came back to watch. An enormous crowd formed. Ampol Oil took films. When we left Australia, we also left our boards for the Aussies. Those films were shown all over the country to different clubs. The films and our boards became the basis for the modern surfboard movement in Australia.

Both my parents are English and came out to Australia in 1967. I was born the following year. My parents, and immigrants like them, were known as '£10 poms.' Back then, the Australian government was trying to get educated British people and Canadians - to be honest, educated white people - to come and live in Australia.

I think I made some mistakes, in different areas, but it's great to be working in a show again now, many years down the track. I have worked in many other different shows in Australia and I've been able to learn from my mistakes. I'm lucky that I made those mistakes early on in Australia, and I definitely won't make them again in the States, but you've got to learn that stuff.

Australia, Australia, we love you from the heart. The kidneys, the liver & the giblets too. And every other part.

I was pointing out the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia and the fact that Australia has been there for Indonesia when Indonesia has been in difficulty.

Australia is a very healthy country which goes along with the fact that it's very high on the Human Development Index, high wealth, good levels of education. So Australia ranks right up there, second or third on the Human Development Index. And Indigenous Australians, if you treated them as if they were a separate country, would rank probably about 100th or below 100.

Conscription is an impediment to achieving the forces Australia needs. It is an alibi for failing to give proper conditions to regular soldiers. We will abolish conscription forthwith. By abolishing it, Australia will achieve a better army, a better-paid army - and a better, united society.

In Alabama this would be a capital case, and if we don't get justice in Australia we're going to pursue the death penalty here

Contemporary bands often will do tour-only releases pressed and sold only in Australia. Crikey!

I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.

The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary objective of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.

I was always nervous about coming back to Australia which was a complete hangover of the days when I left when ballet was not accepted, when I was not accepted, when I was considered a freak for wanting to be a ballet dancer. And, to be 100% honest, I rather dreaded coming back.

I've been lucky to travel through quite a bit of Europe and Australia, but I would love to do Asia and South America and South Africa.

The Australian Gerald Murnane, a genius on the level of Beckett, is known in Australia and Sweden but almost nowhere else. And I loved Reality Hunger, David Shields' recent novel take on the art of the novel.

At 15 I auditioned for 42nd Street in Australia. Dein Perry was in that show. I actually got the job but I couldn't do it because I was only 15. Legally I needed to have another 15-year-old to cover consecutive nights.

There are better alternatives... Australia should be exporting its solar technology, not its uranium.

The Labour Party of today has fits of horrors of the very thought of somebody like me might saying that they bought in white Australia. But I believe they did.

Fleeing persecution is not a crime. And we do not seek to pander to a noisy, tiny minority who will never embrace modern multicultural Australia. But there are important truths we must face. There is a history and a reality that we cannot ignore. The challenge before us is real, the questions we grapple with as elemental as life and death.

My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost of living pressure

I've always been asked the question, "What is it with Australian men?" It's weird because most of my friends here [in the United States] are American men. I think there's cultural differences. It's a really American thing to kind of wax your chest. As a man it's like, "Get rid of that unsightly hair!" In Australia it's like, "Mate, what are you doing? Why would you do that? Doesn't that hurt?" So there's a few little differences that keep us.

I actually found out about Ugg on a trip to Australia, which I guess is where they were born themselves. Everyone was wearing them there, kind of slightly ahead of when they caught on globally. This was in 2002 or so. Just after I left sixth form I was modeling and my best mate was Australian so I went over there to visit her. That was my introduction to the brand.

It's always a fine line. If you overdo (aggression) it's 'ugly Australians', but if you have a smile on your face it's Australia being too nice.

When I went to high school in Australia, I was exposed to textbooks that outlined evolutionary ideas - such as ape-like creatures turning into people. I recognized the conflict between evolutionary ideas and a literal reading of the book of Genesis.

Anyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty.

Even in Australia I'd say 80 percent of our television was American. I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. I used to sit with my mum when I was just nine years old, trying to guess what the twist would be. I love that kind of thing.

You can be tops in Australia and be unheard of everywhere else

My taste is very eclectic. I love musicals, but I also love the classics. I've seen some fantastic productions. I was in a musical for 600 performances in Australia that I first saw in New York.

Australia and New Zealand are now threatened by the might of the Imperial Japanese forces, and both of them should know that any resistance is futile.

I have done many movies that people hadn't seen. 'The Fountain,' I spent a year on that. 'The Prestige' with Chris Nolan, and 'Australia.' From my perspective it's very satisfying. Some movies people see and other movies they don't. 'Wolverine,' 'X Men,' I know that in some level people know me just for that and it's fine for me.

In Australia surfing was for the oiks. It was always rebellious. And sadly it was for a long time a bit unreflective and macho and anti-intellectual. Unlike other sports it was essentially a youth cult, like rock and roll. But like rock and roll its people grew up.

I'd move to Los Angeles if New Zealand and Australia were swallowed up by a tidal wave, if there was a bubonic plague in England and if the continent of Africa disappeared from some Martian attack.

Australia's is a special kind of philistinism, an immovable materialism which puts art and ideas of any kind deliberately and firmly to one side to let the serious business of living proceed without distraction.

I'm not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it's quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It's just full of all these open wounds we don't really know what to do with.

But the people of the disaster area fundamentally needed to understand that the rest of Australia had noticed their misery and their stoicism and their intense sense of community and determination to arise from the sodden wreckage of their homes, and that Australians would dig deep to help. I helped to describe the community ethos which quickly triumphed over incipient despair. It is this mobilisation of the unifying spirit that thrills us all, even as we mourn.

I grew up in a whaling town. We didn't stop whaling in Australia until 1978. And I've always lived in fishing communities. You could say I'm from the Redneck Wing of marine conservation. Everything I know about the sea I learnt at the end of a spear or a hook. Seems weird to admit it, but I hunted and killed my way to enlightenment. Eventually you see where you've been. All the traces you leave are gaps and absences. And it's a sick feeling, knowing you might bequeath a full dose of Nothing to those who come after you.

Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American.

It is the misfortune of contemporary leaders, across the whole spectrum of Australian life, that the community's demand for strong leadership is growing in direct proportion to our lack of confidence in ourselves. The end of this century is an unusually difficult time to be a leader in Australia.

Australia was once a leader in taking global warming seriously. The former PM [Kevin Rudd] called it 'greatest moral challenge of our time'. But in the past couple of years the national consensus has been eroded and Australians are being encouraged by the polluters and their mates in Parliament to forget it was ever mentioned. It's heartbreaking.

Hostility towards China distorted Australia's international affairs for 20 years until 1972, but reconciliation with China 30 years ago had produced a quarter century of constructive bipartisan relations with our region and the world, unmatched in Australian history.

I do have friends in Australia who now refer to me as 'Hollywood Jack.'

In March I had a minor heart attack while I was vacationing in Australia. it scared me, but it was nothing compared to what someone had in store for me down the road.

Olivia Newton-John - Australia's gift to insomniacs. It's nothing but the blonde singing the bland.

Americans understand that they have no stronger ally, no better friend, than Australia.

Extreme weather like the droughts in Russia, China and Brazil and the flooding in Pakistan and Australia [in 2010] have contributed to a level of food price volatility we haven't seen since the oil crisisof 40 years ago. Unfortunately, this could be just a taste of things to come because in the next few decades the build-up of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere could greatly increase the risk of droughts, flooding, pest infestation and water scarcity for agriculture systems already under tremendous stress.

If I was in a refugee camp somewhere on the Pakistani border, of course I'd want to come to Australia.

I think what speaks loudest and what speaks to your point is the blood that's spilling from Australia, to now California. I mean, how much blood has to be spilled until we recognize inside of a Muslim community that with do have an ideological problem?

Probably not for about 10 years, because I've got so much to do before then, but I really want to have four kids ... I'd love them to have adorable little American accents, but I do want to bring my kids up in Australia; it's such a good lifestyle.