Quotes About Australia

Australia's treatment of her Aboriginal people will be the thing on which the world will judge Australia and Australians - Not just now, but in the greater perspective of history.

I was elected by the people of Australia as Prime Minister of Australia. I was elected to do a job, I intend to continue doing that job. I intend to continue doing it to the absolute best of my ability. Part of that job has been to steer this country through the worst economic crisis the world has seen in 75 years.

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.

Fantastically, Australia is still the lucky country. We have the flawed but necessary gift of democracy. Currently there is a debate about whether there is racism in Australia. There is racism in every country in the world. Relatively speaking, we are tolerant of one another. We have a large and giving land and, if you haven't seen its beauty, you haven't seen a beauty precious to the earth.

But in practice Australia - the pluralism of Australia - sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.

Yet the small house, probably more than anything else that man has done, has made the face of Australia and to an extent the faces of Australians. Australia is the small house. Ownership of one in a fenced allotment is as inevitable and unquestionable a goal of the average Australian as marriage.

Leave at night and you reach Australia next morning. But it took 28 years for an Indian PM to come to Australia!

When you think of how much violence, how much blood... how much has been destroyed to create the great nations, America, Australia, Britain, Germany, France, Belgium - even India, Pakistan. Having destroyed so much to make them, we must have nuclear weapons to protect them - and climate change to hold up their way of life... a two-pronged annihilation project.

Unless legal and illegal immigration is halted and reversed, European First World nations across all of Europe from Spain to Russia, North America, Australia and New Zealand - will be destroyed and have their very culture and civilisation changed to that of the Third World. Immigration is now the single most important issue facing all First World nations, and will determine whether Western Civilisation continues to exist or not.

I work more than people realize. It doesn't mean you always see the project. Look at how many stations we have. I did a couple films in Australia. I like the movies.

The boomerang is Australia's chief export (and then import).

But still it's like I said, when you hop in a cab in Italy and the guy doesn't speak English, uhh, you know, you have to start pointin' at things. You learn how to deal with it. What I'm tryin' to say is that it's not as convenient as touring in the states or say somewhere like Australia or even England where they speak the same language fluently.

I only get to spend about six to eight weeks in Australia now and I really miss my family and friends.

The investment in our mining industry has been very positive for Australia but we need to be doing more if we want, as I do, more revenue for our defence - which I think is under-resourced - our police, our elderly, our hospitals, roads, infrastructure and communication, to be able to repay our debts and enable sustainable job opportunities for existing and future generations.

I don't get that many scripts. Back in Australia, I've pretty much done my own shows and really no work outside of that. It's only now that I'm starting to read some Hollywood film scripts, and I've read some really great ones.

I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago for Barnes and Noble, and people were ringing up from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France. I experienced it as an informal chat, which was pleasant, but I couldn't quite take it in. It had a strong element of unreality. I can't be bothered to switch to a computer at my age, though I might get along with e-mail, which sounds appealing.

As we grew to love South Australia, we felt that we were in an expanding society, still feeling the bond to the motherland, but eager to develop a perfect society in the land of our adoption.

The measure in the budget in relation to parental leave pay is based on a simple proposition. Most women across Australia have access to one scheme funded by the taxpayer. Some women have access to two schemes and that's great.

I love Australia as a country. But we had a problem where, for whatever reason, President Barack Obama said that they were going to take probably well over 1,000 illegal immigrants who were in prisons.

Sometime, it will be found that people can be changed only by changing their surroundings. It is alleged that, at least ninety-five percent of the criminals transported from England to Australia and other penal colonies, became good and useful citizens in a new world.

The aim of English cricket is, in fact, mainly to beat Australia.

Americans are the most generous country on the planet. I've worked in Europe, I've worked in Australia. There is no where else where you get absolutely no attitude for being a foreigner. If you do your job well, they embrace you.

You don't need jails, you get put a thousand miles into the middle of Australia, you can go wherever you want, go ahead, but if you come into a city it's straight to jail.

I love having my birthday at Australia Zoo.

I thought I was actually doing quite well - I was on Jazz FM six days a week. I fancied going to Australia and I had a wonderful experience. It's changed me for the better and it was flattering to win.

Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven't been.

I did well as an actor in Australia, and then Paramount invited me over... to have a look at me.

I thank all of those who weren't born in this country for coming here and making a contribution to Australia. We are the least discriminatory country in the world, in my view.

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.

Tennis Australia really led the charge as far as upping the prize money and trying to do the right thing by the players. They also led the way so women have equal prize money in all the grand slams too.

It is in the national interest to have the Flying Kangaroo. It's in the interests of our tourism industry. It's in the interests of jobs here in Australia.

I seem to have a soft spot in my heart for Australia and Australian actors. After having worked with one in 'Cinderella' and a multitude of them in 'Cats,' I've wanted the opportunity to actually perform 'down under.'

Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.

Is it just me, or did Tamou go to hug a Kiwi before realising he had just scored for Australia?

OPTIMISM, enthusiasm, confidence against fear, prejudice, conformity - that is his enduring message to the men and women of Australia. Never more than now.

I remember learning German - so beautiful, so strange - at school in Australia on the other side of the earth. My family was nonplussed about me learning such an odd, ugly language and, though of course too sophisticated to say it, the language of the enemy. But I liked the sticklebrick nature of it, building long supple words by putting short ones together. Things could be brought into being that had no name in English - Weltanschauung, Schadenfreude, sippenhaft, Sonderweg, Scheissfreundlichkeit, Vergangenheitsbewältigung.

The anti-globalization movement is one of the biggest globalized events of the contemporary world, people coming from everywhere, —Australia, Indonesia, Britain, India, Poland, Germany, South Africa—to demonstrate in Seattle or Quebec. What could be more global than that?

So what is the Dreaming? I would say the Dreaming is a non-indigenous term used in its broadest sense to describe the stories of our ancestors and how they shaped the land and how they are still part of the land... Across Aboriginal Australia there are as many different terms for Dreaming as there are language groups

Obviously all of us have thought about Vietnam, particularly in my generation in Australia that were part of conscription and fought there. Our friends came back, forever changed. So there were a lot of questions.

Australia is properly speaking an island, but it is so much larger than every other island on the face of the globe, that it is classed as a continent in order to convey to the mind a just idea of its magnitude.

I suppose, because I am a sportsman and travel all over Australia, I see every day Australians doing small and large and often unnoticed deeds; many times I thought how nice it would be for them to be recognised, so I hope somehow that in receiving this honour that I represent these people.

Well, Michael, we will be telling the people of Australia in good time before the next election exactly what they can expect from us. No surprises, no excuses. They will be our watch words going into the election and afterwards, should we form a government.

What I'm trying to do when I visit Australia, is warn Australians that even though it might not be the case today, learn from the mistakes that we made in Europe: be vigilant and look at Islam for what it really is.

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.

Australia is so cool that it's hard to even know where to start describing it. The beaches are beautiful; so is the weather. Not too crowded. Great food, great music, really nice people. It must be a lot like Los Angeles was many years ago.

Australia is an outdoor country. People only go inside to use the toilet. And that's only a recent development.

It's an easier task to imagine someone's interior world when you feel quite distanced from them. In the same way that I find writing about Australia easier than writing about the UK because I don't have the reality of it in front of me to get me bogged down in trying to be exact.

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.