Top secret
"One doesn't feel that the right place for Miss Percy is in prison, but there is a limit and she is at the end of our tether." — British magistrate L.P. Stephen imposing a six-month suspended sentence on Lindis Percy, a peace activist arrested 160 times since 1990 for trespassing on the USA's "top secret" Menwith Hill electronic spy base in northern Yorkshire. The local court has since stopped recording trespassing convictions concerning the base following doubts that by-laws covering it are legal.
Never-ending story
"We continue to pay ourselves too much. A much greater degree of pay restraint is vital if we are to build on the increase in competitiveness which we achieved in the '80s." — British trade and industry minister Michael Hesseltine on this year's average rate of pay rises, the lowest for 25 years.
Cargo cult
"For our government it became an investment cargo cult, whereas for the Japanese Australia was simply not important enough to be part of their global strategy." — ANU professor Gavan McCormack on prospects for the Multi-Function Polis projected to be built on a toxic wasteland near Adelaide.
Money for crud
"If people want to pay to watch crud, that is what will be broadcast to them. I'm not going to put myself in a position of telling them they cannot have crud if crud is what they want ... If pay TV doesn't provide consumers with what they want, it will go broke." — Federal communications minister Bob Collins extolling the virtues of pay television.
Serious
"A few years ago we may have been seen as young ratbags with crazy policies but now we're taken seriously." — Sean Cousins, president of the Queensland Young Nationals, whose magazine recently carried an editorial including the following: "over the last decade of Socialism from Canberra, the Labor Government has sold out our own defence in favour of supporting our Treasury's greatest parascites, the unionists, the Aborigines, single mothers and the not so genuine Unemployed". (Spelling etc as in original).
Democracy
"Papua New Guinea has been far more effective shutting off information from Bougainville than the Indonesians when they shot people in East Timor." — Dr Matthew Spriggs of the ANU on reports that PNG troops shot hundreds of Bougainvilleans during May.
Stubborn
"No matter how much assurance you give people, they still want it removed." — Professor David Ferguson, former chairman of the Australian mesothelioma surveillance program, who says we should learn to live safely with asbestos.