[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.
BOB HAWKEWe had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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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 -
By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.
BOB HAWKE -
Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable.
BOB HAWKE -
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 -
Nor will they perceive the distribution of wealth and resources between nations to be unalterably ordained by heaven and incapable of drastic rearrangement by the less than gentle manipulation of man.
BOB HAWKE -
I think she finds the Commonwealth and her position as Head of the Commonwealth infinitely more interesting than being the Queen of England, because she has no significant role in the latter.
BOB HAWKE -
The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.
BOB HAWKE -
It had things that it could do and which I thought were worthwhile: one would be South Africa, of course. And, as I said, I assumed a leadership role within the Commonwealth on that.
BOB HAWKE -
It was a remarkable relationship. Margaret [Thatcher] and I had a love/hate relationship. She was always defending the South African regime and we had some terrible fights, including an enormous one in Canada.
BOB HAWKE -
It was very much an Australian/New Zealand initiative to have a nuclear free South Pacific. And the Americans were very apprehensive about this.
BOB HAWKE -
She [ Elizabeth II] is, you know, “Do-what-you’re-told, Lady”. But in the Commonwealth, she is much more than just a figurehead.
BOB HAWKE -
He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.
BOB HAWKE -
As far as we’re concerned, there was no sporting organisation [that] should have anything to do with the sport in South Africa.
BOB HAWKE -
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 -
He said it was very uncomfortable and he often took it off, but of course, in the end, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been wearing three vests – he would have been gone.
BOB HAWKE