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We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.

Bob Hawke

The world will not wait for us.
BOB HAWKE

Leadership Waiting World
I find a fence a very uncomfortable place to squat my bottom.
BOB HAWKE

Fence Squat Uncomfortable
One other thing: at the meeting in Canada, [there was] the coup in Fiji. This comes to an important part of the Commonwealth: the role of the Queen [Elizabeth II]. I had absolutely just enormous respect for her as leader of the Commonwealth.
BOB HAWKE

Commonwealth Country Important Intelligent Meeting Queen
I got to know him well as Vice President to Ronald Reagan. And George rang me up and said, “Oh, Bob,” he said, “I’m having trouble with Brian [Mulroney].” He said, “He’s got a big wheat trade with Iraq, and he doesn’t want to upset that.” I said, “You leave it with me.”
BOB HAWKE

Country People President Trade Trouble Vice Wheat
And that’s what brought the regime down. The last South African Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis, went on record as saying that it was the investment sanctions that put the final nail in the coffin of apartheid.
BOB HAWKE

Final Finance Investment Record Regime Sanction
There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn’t have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.
BOB HAWKE

Benefiting Country Doubt Government Reform
An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.
BOB HAWKE

Abonded Assumption Constitute Income Production Proof
I don’t know who described Mahathir [bin Mohamad] as a pillar of the Commonwealth, but they don’t know what they’re talking about.
BOB HAWKE

Commonwealth Country Describe Pillars Talking
While society cannot provide employment for its members, the production/work/income nexus has to be abandoned as a justification for our present parsimony to the unemployed.
BOB HAWKE

Class Employment Income Leadership Society
[ Elizabeth II] has immersed herself, in the sense [that] she can speak intelligently about any and all members of the Commonwealth and she has played a role.
BOB HAWKE

Commonwealth Elizabeth Immersed Members Roles Speak
The first meeting in 1983 was held in India and I was very off put by her. I just couldn’t abide her, basically.
BOB HAWKE

Basically First Meeting
Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
BOB HAWKE

Bills Country University Wells
Brian Mulroney, myself, [and] Rajiv Gandhi; I think that was the real core [of the Commonwealth ]. That was the engine room, I reckon.
BOB HAWKE

Commonwealth Real Rooms Thinking
By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.
BOB HAWKE

Australian Children Poverty
I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, “Come up to Vancouver”, and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, “I think it could work.”
BOB HAWKE

Come Commercial Country Running Senior
I think there are a number of reasons, not least of which is the personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]. It’s very easy to underrate her significance.
BOB HAWKE

Elizabeth Number Numbers Queens Thinking

We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.

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We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.

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Popular Authors

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