A Quote by Paul Keating

As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me. — © Paul Keating
As prime minister, the pastoral lease question was a very vexing and torrid one for me.
I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that's the big difference.
There are some issues where ministers should come and talk to the prime minister, if the prime minister hasn't already talked to them. Any issue which a minister thinks is going to be profoundly controversial, where we do not have a clear existing position, it is important that there be a conversation between the minister and the prime minister. I think they all understand that and I think it is working very well.
In our party, for the post of the prime minister or chief minister, there is no race, and nor does anyone stake their claim. Who will be the prime minister or chief minister, either our parliamentary board decides on this or the elected MLAs, in the case of chief minister, and MPs, in the case of the prime minister, select their leader.
I look forward to hosting Prime Minister Lee [Hsien Loong], whose friendship and partnership I appreciate very much and with whom I've worked throughout my administration. This will also be an opportunity for me to reciprocate the hospitality that the Prime Minister and the people of Singapore showed to me during my visit to Singapore for the APEC summit in 2009.
In 1957, which is now 57 years ago, my grandfather and then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi welcomed Prime Minister Menzies as the first Australian Prime Minister to visit Japan after World War II and drove the conclusion of the Japan-Australia Agreement on Commerce.
On the 26th of December of last year, I took office for my second term as prime minister. And it is the first time ever since then-Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, during the occupation period, that a prime minister is taking this position for the second time with a number of years in between.
I assumed the leadership within the Commonwealth for the fight against apartheid. I was very much assisted by Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister of Canada, [and] Rajiv Gandhi, when he became the Prime Minister of India. And there were trade sanctions.
I have no ambitions to be a cabinet minister, or prime minister. I wouldn't wish being prime minister on my worst enemy.
Whoever the next prime minister of this country will be, it will be a female prime minister and a female prime minister who has formidable skills and I know whichever one of the two wins they will lead this country well.
I'll tell you whose view on [Bashar] Assad is the same as mine. It's Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said Israel doesn't have a dog in that fight because Assad is a puppet of Iran, a Shia radical Islamic terrorist, but at the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't want to see Syria governed by ISIS.
People in the street will either call me 'Prime Minister' or 'Justin.' We'll see how that goes. But when I'm working, when I'm with my staff in public, I'm 'Prime Minister.' I say that if we're drinking beer out of a bottle, and you can see my tattoos, you should be comfortable calling me 'Justin.'
It is my hope that I could be not just a Prime Minister, but a Prime Minister for Aboriginal affairs, the first I imagine that we've ever had.
I never criticized Modi. All I said was that Modi cannot be a chief minister and still nurse prime ministerial ambitions. I only suggested that he should resign as the chief minister and then stake his claim to be prime minister.
What do you prefer? A prime minister obsessed with being popular, or a prime minister who does the job?
The label 'wife of the prime minister' is like a giant signboard pointing at my head from a Monty Python sketch. But I am not Mrs. Prime Minister. I'm a human being.
No woman in my time will be prime minister or chancellor or foreign secretary - not the top jobs. Anyway, I wouldn't want to be prime minister; you have to give yourself 100 percent.
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