More like melodrama
"It's a tragedy for all Australia." — An Associated Pulp and Paper Mills executive on the recent defeat of resource security legislation in the Senate. APPM said the defeat had led it to scrap plans to build a $1.2 billion pulp mill ... which it probably didn't intend to build anyhow.
Underclass
"We only have to look across the Pacific at what happened in Los Angeles to know what might happen if you finish up with an underclass of children in terms of their employment and education." — Victorian Premier Joan Kirner, leader of a Labor government responsible for Victoria's highest unemployment since the 1930s.
Good old days
"If you wanted to get a job, you could ... we used to have a saying in Australia called 'the dead-end job'. That referred to someone who got a job that didn't involve any training ... I would like to see Australia go back to those days." — Liberal industrial relations spokesperson John Howard.
Smart
"He's powerful because he's got one of the smartest political brains around. In terms of reading and understanding the electorate, they don't come much better." — A top Labor machine man on Senator Graeme Richardson, presently in deep water over his phone call to the president of the Marshall Islands on behalf of a relative facing fraud charges there.
Not foolproof
"No-one expected that this measure would be foolproof, but the whole gamut of safety measures should have prevented an unfortunate occurrence." — Wing commander Brian Carmichael at the inquest for nine soldiers killed when US planes bombed a column of British vehicles during the Gulf War.
Misunderstanding
Remarks by the archbishop of Canterbury "appear to demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of the dynamism of the market economy". — Peter Morgan, director general of the British Institute of Directors after the archbishop, George Carey, said he thought there was something wrong when industrial growth in parts of the world left people elsewhere "hungry, thirsty, naked, ill or in prison", and that "massive individual pay rises [for directors] during a recession do not encourage public support for wealth creation".
And the cash
"A country in which everyone may realise their aspirations ... to rise as far and fast as they can ... if they have the will and the skills to do so." — British Prime Minister John Major opening the new parliament after the recent elections.
In theory
Celibacy is "a positive thing ... an enrichment of one's ministry". — Cardinal Cathal Daly, head of the Catholic church in Ireland on the bishop of Galway, in hot water because he used church funds to support his son and a former lover.
Modest too
I "remain the president who strongly supports the law enforcement in this country, and strongly supports the military. I remain confident in our system of justice. We remain the freest, fairest, most just and most decent nation on the face of the earth." — George Bush during a recent visit to Los Angeles.