Quotes About Australia

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I announce that I will resign as Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs. I am sad because I love this job. I'm totally dedicated to the work that we are doing in Australia's name around the world, and I believe that we have achieved many good results for Australia, and I'm proud of them.

Eighty-two percent of Australia's bird species and two thirds of Australia's mammal species can be found on our (Australian Wildlife Conservancy) reserves. We put teams of people on the frontline in the battle against feral animals, wildfires and noxious weeds. Science underpins everything we do.

What Australia was before is the fullest Australia has ever been... as created and made and valued by indigenous people. The white man came here and took it away, took it away and replaced it.

I had always been fascinated by the whole idea that Australia was this different ecology and that when rabbits and prickly pears and other things from Europe were introduced into Australia, they ran amok.

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 came to The United States to see what would happen in 2000 after working for 20 years in Australia and asked my agent to look out for the nasty roles because I'd become famous for playing the nicest man in Australia. So I wanted to play bad guys. But I've been doing that now for 13 years so when I was offered the chance to do some comedy, I grabbed it.

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'm always looking for that place, you know, where there's no rednecks, that place where people get along, and I never find it. I went to Australia, right, and I thought Australia was gonna be a groovy, surfnoid, smoke-a-joint wombat, you know? 'G'day mate!' 'No worries!' And it's like Arkansas with a beach. It's a whole country with a 'No Fat Chicks' sticker on it.

We must break out of this mindset in Australia that we are a small nation on the other side of the world from the main, great Western nations. Australia is the twelfth largest economy in the world. We are a not insignificant player in commerce, in geopolitics and we must be in culture as well and we are.

The bomb goes off in Australia, and a 360-degree sphere of ionosphere (which is up there not too far above your heads, not too many miles) flashes. In other words, the flash in Australia, the ionosphere flashes. People get a secondary kickback from the ionosphere just as though they were standing next to the bomb, don't you see?

When I was young I never believed that Australia was anything else except blessed. I thought it was a little dull when I was young, but that was 'cause I was a snob.

Probably my mother's life was prolonged beyond that of a long-lived family by her coming to Australia in middle life; and if I ever had any tendency to consumption, the climate must have helped me.

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.

We are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially with a hotter and drier climate in southern Australia - the rush to construct desalination plants is an expensive testament to that.

There is no place in the world like Australia. Not even its beautiful neighbor New Zealand.

Today the thing I find myself thinking about the most is our landscape...I think it's something a lot of us take for granted; for many of us Australia is just there but how many of us have really seen it, have seen Kakadu or Kings Canyon? I know I hope to at some stage, to see Uluru at sunset and the ancient art in the Abrakurrie caves. I think it's our landscape which defines our identity and it's what I'm most grateful for.

Residuals from Australia, from the Mission Magic show, saved my butt. So there is a reason for everything.

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.

Growing up in Australia, you never feel like you're going to live beyond that place. You wake up and you go to the beach, and you do your homework. You're just a kid.

The best hope for Australia is the ballot box and good education.

We had a level of tariffs of about five per cent. Now a lot of those will go, most of them will go over time, some of them immediately. Now that means that electronic goods and other things, white goods, coming into Australia, will be cheaper for our community. It also means in many cases that the inputs used by our high-end manufacturers to make a final product are also coming in cheaper than they otherwise would - so it makes those manufacturers more competitive.

If you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Nobel Prize winning genius, we will not let you in.

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 wickets I have played on for my whole career, most of them have been to suit fast bowlers in Australia.

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.

There always are a basket of issues in any federal election campaign, but in this part of Australia [Capricornia] I can assure you having as you know a fairly frequent visitor to Rockhampton, that the issue of jobs and employment and where the jobs of the future are coming from, is the biggest single issue on people's minds.

Australia is about as far away as you can get. I like that.

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.

If you go out to bat against Australia, they come at you hard.

I am happy to be a regional writer. My region is the American West, old Mexico, West Virginia, New York, Europe, Australia, the human heart, and the male groin.

I was happy to find out that when on tour, Dolly Parton doesn't use hotels but stays on her bus every night, to the point of having her buses shipped from Austria to Australia so she can tour the way she sees fit. I used one of her buses once - an honor.

Trees are, after all, our largest and oldest living things. They are Australia's natural, national treasures - the true Elders of our vast continent.

Years ago, while being in an airport in Australia, I happened to meet with David Helfgott. I knew that he was a bit fond of me and I was personally a fan of him. We were so happy to meet and hug and we had a very warm conversation together. Since that time.... about 20 years ago, I have not meet him again. I think that he is a very good pianist !

My family still lives over there [ in South Africa] .I miss them terribly. I would say that most of my life over there was probably very similar to the sort of life someone would experience growing up somewhere like Australia or in the US.

Hip hop has always been, for us, for artists who are pure to the craft - any place overseas, whether it's Australia, any place in Asia, Germany, Africa, it becomes something where you can still go and work. Hip hop is an import culture. We're spoiled by it here. It's homegrown.

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.

The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country’s dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia’s art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.

On the one hand, there is no question that English - frequently bad English - has become the universal language of scholarship. It is clearly a tremendous handicap for people outside of the United States, Britain, and Australia and a few other countries because few of them are native speakers, but we demand that they present and publish in English.

Scientists in Australia are working on making biodegradable car parts out of hemp. This might get confusing. When someone says, roll up the window, they might mean, roll up the window!

I'm so immersed in my little world that I don't often sit back and pay attention to what's going on around me. It truly stuns me when people recognize me. Obviously, I'm not a film star, but even at a design exhibition or art exhibition, if someone comes up to me, I'm sort of taken aback. I don't think of myself like that. But if I can have an effect on young designers, that's great - particularly young designers coming from Australia. Europeans grew up with design. The rest of us lived on tidbits of information.

I think I was about 18 before I decided I wanted to pursue acting. I went to drama school in Western Australia when I was 19.

Some books claim I have already clocked up a century of Grands Prix, but let me put the record straight. Australia will be my 100th start, and I aim to mark the milestone with a cracking performance. It could even be celebrated with a victory.

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

I want to go to Australia and take the same goofy picture of me holding a koala that everyone else takes.

Australia is a huge rest home, where no unwelcome news is ever wafted on to the pages of the worst newspapers in the world.

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.