Institutions do live on their history.
BOB HAWKEYou’ve got to remember the Cold War was a very real thing then, so the relationship with the United States was very, very important.
More Bob Hawke Quotes
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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.
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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.
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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 -
My point was that the war was intrinsically wrong, and as a result of our participation we haven’t improved Australia’s security but created a greater danger at home and abroad.
BOB HAWKE -
Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.
BOB HAWKE -
We were great mates [with Rajiv Gandhi]: very, very, very close friends. In fact, on my visit to India as Prime Minister, we were going to his home for dinner.
BOB HAWKE -
It was Indira Gandhi who very much lined up with the Russians. And she was, you know, within the Commonwealth, basically one out on that.
BOB HAWKE -
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 -
Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable.
BOB HAWKE -
[ 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 -
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 -
It [also] lives on its history, now, to some extent: its achievements [ of the Commonwealth] in Rhodesia and South Africa, which were enormous. And they’ll live on that for some time,
BOB HAWKE -
We [ with Brian Mulroney and Rajiv Gandhi] went to the meeting in Canada [the 1987 Vancouver CHOGM] and I said to them there that sanctions weren’t working; they were just being busted.
BOB HAWKE -
George Bush Junior [George W Bush] was a religious fanatic, and Tony Blair wasn’t far behind in a way.
BOB HAWKE -
I hated [Robert Mugabe]. He’s one of the worst human beings I’ve ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.
BOB HAWKE