A Quote by Richard Flanagan

Under Malcolm Fraser's Liberal governments in the 1970s, large numbers of refugees fleeing Vietnam in wretched boats were taken in without any great fuss.

Richard Flanagan

Quote Topics

Any Boats Fleeing Fuss Governments Great Large Large Numbers Liberal Malcolm Numbers Refugees Taken Vietnam Were Without Wretched

Quote Author

Richard Flanagan
Australian - Writer
Born: 1961

The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia... I always thought Malcolm would be around a lot longer. I must say, I wished he had been.

Julia Gillard

Cubans who arrive and can prove that they are refugees who are truly fleeing political persecution will continue to qualify as refugees. The only thing that I've asked for is to do away with automatic benefits granted to someone, basically, Cubans who come from Cuba, if it cannot be verified that they are refugees fleeing political persecution, so they will be treated the same way as any other immigrant who arrives in the United States, which is that legal immigrants in the United States don't have the right to any federal benefits for five years.

Marco Rubio

I'd say about Malcolm Fraser, as he said about himself, is that he was always, from the day he entered Parliament in 1955 until the day he died today, was a Liberal.

George Brandis

If you look at the movement of refugees, in Vladimir Lenin's phrase, "the people who voted with their feet," the movement of refugees until comparatively modern times was overwhelmingly from West to East, not from East to West. Refugees of all kinds were constantly fleeing from Christendom to the Islamic lands. Jews of course and Muslims of course, but even some Christians and the movement of refugees went overwhelmingly that way.

Bernard Lewis

In the 1970s, we got a Labor government that put more emphasis on trade with Asia; the Vietnam war ended, and refugees were coming in. We were more part of Asia than America and the rest of the world. There was the proximity, for a start - all these countries and cultures just north of us. It just made sense that that's what we were part of.

Jimmy Barnes

If you look back to the anti-intervention movements, what were they? Let's take the Vietnam War - the biggest crime since the Second World War. You couldn't be opposed to the war for years. The mainstream liberal intellectuals were enthusiastically in support of the war. In Boston, a liberal city where I was, we literally couldn't have a public demonstration without it being violently broken up, with the liberal press applauding, until late 1966.

Noam Chomsky

No liberal newspaper ever talked about the invasion of Vietnam; they talked about the defense of Vietnam. And then they were saying, "well, it's not going well." Ok, that make them liberal. It's like, it's if we were to say, that going back to, say, Nazi Germany, that Hitler's general staff was liberal after Stalingrad because they were criticizing his tactics: "It was a mistake to fight a two front war, we should've knocked off Englad first," or something.

Noam Chomsky

We cannot forget that we are a nation founded by refugees who were fleeing oppression and often fearful for their lives.

Brad Schneider

Cubans must prove that they're political refugees. And if they can prove that they're really fleeing persecution, well, they would qualify as refugees.

Marco Rubio

[Malcolm Fraser] went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And he would have been a very lonely person, and I think he probably met a lot of black students there who were also probably lonely. I think he formed friendships with them, which established his judgement about the question of colour. That’s my theory. I don’t know whether it’s right or not, but that’s what I always respected about Malcolm. He was absolutely, totally impeccable on the question of race and colour.

Bob Hawke

We`re a little bit low in the 1970s, right, post-Vietnam, Watergate era, malaise, all that, but this is more like the 1930s where the very notion of liberal democracy is being questioned, and that is disturbing.

Daniel Fried

Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

Blaise Pascal

The media establishment senses that the boats are coming and it has taken it upon itself to stand on those beaches and do everything it can to shoot the soldiers on the boats. They know the beaches will be taken.

Marianne Williamson

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

Arthur C. Clarke

Refugees are threatening, not just to Americans, but also in many countries the world over. And it's partially because, unlike immigrants, refugees do not choose where they're going to go or why they're fleeing, and they are unwanted populations. They bring with them the stigma of disaster.