Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Of course as a small country you're not necessarily in the strongest negotiating position unless you're negotiating with other small countries.
The world has been gradually reducing its nuclear arsenals. Testing must stop so that progress on the destruction of nuclear weapons may begin.
In the end, there will always be a fundamental difference of perspective between New Zealand and Australia on defense, whoever is in government.
They couldn't, in the National Party, run a bath and if either the deputy leader or the leader tried to, Sir Robert would run away with the plug.
It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.
If the market is left to sort matters out, social injustice will be heightened and suffering in the community will grow with the neglect the market fosters.
The government's position was that we have frigates that have got a useful life until 2006. There is no necessity for us to make final decisions until 2002.
Fortunately New Zealand doesn't have land borders so we are able to be somewhat more rigorous on who gets in and out of our country than perhaps some people.
By and large, women in New Zealand are fortunate compared with some other countries, including many in our own region. But there is still progress to be made.
So I think that we're in a very heightened and somewhat unusual period of politics and polling around the countries that New Zealanders take close interest in.
This is the difficulty about talking about it without sounding big-headed, but you cannot speak of New Zealand now without my involvement in what it has become.
Raptors are smart. Very smart. Believe me, all the problems we have so far are nothing compared with what we'd have if the raptors ever got out of their holding pen.
People often think that people like me don't have ordinary lives. I have the greatest pleasure, and in fact, the greatest success in my career is having been a mother.
Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it.
I mean you really can target your answers to get the instant response and I think that is a very manipulative type of polling. I really have no time for that worm at all.
Bassett was a member of parliament and a cousin on my father's side of the family. My father delivered him and it became plain in later days that he must have dropped him.
I am not a supporter of the rhetoric of, 'Dear, dear, the toys have got lead paint.' If I had a manufacturer in China that allowed that to happen, I'd fire them instantly.
It is important to remember that the Pacific Ocean covers a quarter of the world's surface and that each Pacific country has its own cultural, historical and ethnic identity.
Well, there have been periods in the past when prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand were at each others' throats publicly and frequently. That's not productive at all.
The Platform for Action gives due emphasis to the fact that women globally have continued to have insufficient access to the resources necessary to achieve economic independence.
Hollow commitments to action in the future are insufficient. Deferring difficult issues must not be tolerated. Our children and grandchildren expect us to speak and act decisively.
In terms of protecting ourselves, the main issues are around how do we protect our borders [from illegal migrants and livestock and plant diseases], how do we protect our fisheries?
Men are shameless in selling their story. Women are often reserved. So we do need to encourage women to know their story and then tell it strategically as to how they can add value.
As New Zealanders, we've been in on the United Nations from the very beginning, played a role in the drafting of the charter - it means a lot to us that those processes are followed.
With the adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, the international community sent out a clear message that gender based violence will not be tolerated.
The decision by France to resume nuclear testing in the South Pacific has destroyed this hope and raised a storm of protest at home, in the South Pacific and thankfully around the world.
The Pacific had great hope that when the former President Mitered decided to halt nuclear testing, we had put behind us the issue of nuclear states testing their weapons in our Pacific region.
In New Zealand, men and women would not take a party seriously if it did not have a good gender - and increasingly racial - mix. It's not about being politically correct; it's just who we are.
I think we have a fascinating new and quite dominant input into politics - and it wont go away. From time to time, people articulate a view that we should ban opinion polls, but that's nonsense.
We need a lot of thinking and ideas. We need all the innovators, particularly with the new sustainable technologies - how do we get them to affordability so that people can generate clean energy?
Innovation applied across the board of development is having a huge impact, and can have more. All sorts of technology can provide shortcuts, can overcome obstacles which once seemed insuperable.
Politicians, no matter who they are, shouldn't be able to manipulate the public on a single issue and then call an election at the height of support - that's a little bit of a manipulation of democracy.
I think it's inevitable that New Zealand will become a republic and that would reflect the reality that New Zealand is a totally sovereign-independent 21st century nation 12,000 miles from the United Kingdom.
I do remember when I first went into politics, one of my competitors asked me, 'Well, Jenny Shipley, who's looking after your children?' I don't think many of my male colleagues have faced a similar question.
On a trip to Germany, Lange and his entourage were climbing the tower of an ancient castle when they stopped to catch their breath. "How old is this ruin?" someone asked a guide. "Forty-two years," said Lange.
There is also a marked global trend towards sustainable agriculture, building on traditional methods which use fewer chemical inputs, carefully manage soil and water resources, and work hand-in-hand with nature.
Ten years ago in Nairobi we said that the participation of women in the decision-making and appraisal processes of the United Nations was essential if the organization was to effectively serve women's interests.
Nigel might have an earlier date, but I think it's unprecedented from my memory. So it is a reminder to everybody that the public can move very rapidly on some issues and therefore what looks settled may not be.
You have to talk about why things happened the way they did. You can't actually explain my political life except by a series of situations rather than by some carefully constructed, rigidly progressed ascendancy.
I felt really compromised. I think legal marriage is unnecessary and I would not have formalised the relationship [with husband Peter Davis] except for going into Parliament. I have always railed against it privately.
On many occasions New Zealand has spoken about the need to ensure that women's concerns are fully integrated into all aspects of the United Nations' activities and structures, not marginalised in one part of the Secretariat.
And if you're getting a poll coming out month after month saying something and then all of a sudden does an enormous swing in one direction - you are dealing with a more volatile electorate than most people believe they have.
Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress.
It is a very small minority point of view and I think, through continuing to set the tone of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity, you just have to further marginalize such people. Hopefully one day nobody will think that way.
I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term.
And I think the rolling polls put more pressure on them to sustain their beliefs and to improve their delivery of the policy and their delivery of the ideas so that they can garner support for whatever principle they're articulating.
The serious problems facing the world today will never be solved until women are able to use their full potential on behalf of themselves, their families, and their global and local communities, as the World Bank and others have discovered
The serious problems facing the world today will never be solved until women are able to use their full potential on behalf of themselves, their families, and their global and local communities, as the World Bank and others have discovered.
The Open Skies issue is something that's ongoing and we understand that there are issues in Australia that need to be sorted out. It's something that I think over time there's an opportunity for us and we'll work on that in a progressive way.
When I hear people flatteringly say, 'You're an expert on East Asia...' I'm certainly an observer of East Asia, and central Asia, and ASEAN, and to a lesser extent South Asia and the Gulf, but there's always something behind the wall in China.