35 Quotes by David Marr

Standing to one side watching the politicians and the journalists and the cameras is one of the factory’s owners, John Kernahan, who tells me Sulo’s annual turnover is $85 million. So the carbon tax? “It’s not a biggie.

A first bill for the abolition of compulsory student union fees failed in 2004 but it was back as soon as the government won control of the Senate.

I fundamentally believe that if you empower people, you can move mountains. I fundamentally believe that if people are given a fair go, the world’s a better place, people are happier individually and society progresses.

Shorten is one of that interesting pack of politicians born of determined mothers and largely absent fathers. There are so many: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are distinguished alumni. Among recent Labor leaders in Australia are Rudd, Albanese and Shorten. Among the qualities these men share are self-discipline, boundless ambition and an appetite for approval on a national scale.

Abbott joined the union, the Australian Journalists’ Association. He led a little strike at the Bulletin and opposed a big strike at the Australian.

Abbott has always had a knack of sidestepping blame for his own hyperbole. Even wild exaggerations are rarely held against him. He retracts a little and is forgiven a lot. “What you’ve got is constant colour and movement,” says his old boss John Hewson. “He gets right in your face. He exaggerates; he grabs the headlines, even if he knows that the next day he’s gonna have to back that off.

There was no factional discipline in the drift towards Rudd. Individuals were making up their own minds. In some worlds, that’s how politics works.

While he was in the neighbourhood he went to New York for the – surely redundant by now – ceremonial visit of the next prime minister to Rupert Murdoch. Back home in the Spectator Australia he laid it on thick again: “Along with the commander of the First AIF, Sir John Monash, and the penicillin inventor, Lord Florey, he is one of the Australians who have made the most difference in the world.

But the bill was also loathed by the National Party because it would drain university sporting clubs of cash. Out in the bush, those clubs and that money mattered.