Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
We want our leaders to be fair dinkum, as much among us as above us.
I support affirmative action. I support special measures when you need it.
Let's start therefore with a universal truth: leaders are fundamentally accountable.
Graduation day was a milestone in the most important journey of all - to the centre of oneself.
I've never owned a pair of jeans, but I had a fantastic denim boiler-suit and it got a lot of wearing.
I believe the old boys' network is a powerful one. No one gives up power and privilege willingly, do they?
I must say that part of our national wealth is not only the nation's people but those people who lead them.
Seek out a person whom you admire and respect for the support you need - that we all need from time to time.
Maternity leave and parental leave is absolutely vital for strengthening families. It's an issue for men and women.
Yes, you can have it all, but not all at the same time. Set your own priorities, trust your gut and follow your heart.
Older people often mistakenly consider that the young people do not care about their country, but the reverse is actually true.
Leaders who fail to appreciate this fundamental precept of accountability must also fail to muster the profound commitment true leadership demands.
Our vision is to look through the eyes of our kids. We are a lucky, peaceful nation. We are an unselfish people. That's one of our proudest national attributes.
Begun as a girl from a little country town in central western Queensland, inspired by noble ideas of justice, about fairness, about making the world a better place.
It's a great privilege and an honour to have the experiences and opportunities that I do to meet extraordinary Australians right across our country who share a great generosity of spirit.
Communication is the conduit of leadership from the Prime Minister down to the leading hand of a small group of council workers fixing the roads. Leadership uncommunicated is leadership unrequited!
Oh, fatherhood has a very humanising effect on a bloke like me in the military. As a dad, you become absolutely aware of your own human frailty and a need to be nurturing and compassionate and fatherly
But it is my total conviction that all the trappings of good leadership are generic and widely applicable whether you are standing in a khaki queue with your mess tins or on an automobile production line.
My mother played the piano and my father the violin, I can remember my dad teaching me how to waltz; I had my feet on his, my mother playing the piano, and my husband will tell you the lessons weren't very successful.
The aboriginal women leaders of Papunya - the Papunya Artists - performed a dance for me: the Honey Ant dance. They'd never done it for anyone else. They honoured me with a ceremonial stick that signifies the story of the land.
The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country’s dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia’s art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.
The Australian way of affirmative action is setting goals and recognising discrimination and lack of opportunity and deciding to take action and setting some goals and targets. I guess I prefer that language to talking about quotas.
The thing we often forget to talk about, or perhaps we take for granted, is our country's dazzling beauty. Our natural environment is so much a part of Australia's art, writing, music and culture, both indigenous and non indigenous.
I think there's a very clear recognition and understanding that the progress of women in business at the very highest decision-making levels is too slow. This is a discussion that's going on in every country around the world, actually.
I think that young Australians ought to be taking language education much more seriously. I mean, you know, every day I'm meeting people with expertise, ability and talent in fields where I want to learn so much more; science, for example.
One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!
We all go back to our roots. My father went to the central west, went to Ilfracombe in 1919. He was the manager of the wool scour there. And, Ilfracombe was right at the heart of Australia's great wool industry, and my mother was a teacher at Winton.
They (the youth of Australia) are out there clamouring in all forms of voice, and they are not so much hedging us older Australians aside as saying, 'For heaven's sake, listen to us and empower us to help drive this country towards a wonderful future.'
The bonds that women share around the world, wherever we come from, they're very powerful and they have an ease of communication because we share those very important things of our families, our mothering, of improving opportunities for the next generation.
I didn't have any Indigenous friends until I was in my 30s, and I'll always remember and be inspired by the remarkable friendship I had with Connie Bush, an outstanding Indigenous leader from Groot Eylandt on who was on the National Women's Advisory Council with me.
Again and again, I learn how much friendship enriches my life, bringing warmth, assurance, humour, inspiration, a sense of security. It depends on honesty, trust, loyalty. It's about giving. It's for sharing the good times, but also the tough times, hurt, grief, sadness.
When a woman is fit and healthy, everything else falls into place. We are conditioned to put others first, that 'burnt chop syndrome' we observed in our mothers. It takes discipline to pay attention to our diets, to exercise, to leave time for refreshment of mind, body and spirit.
I think we have to keep working enormously hard to see that every single Indigenous child - every Australian child - has true equality of opportunity. Weve got to work harder at it. I think, you know, the heartland issue for us is the gap; the gap in life expectancy in this country.
I think we have to keep working enormously hard to see that every single Indigenous child - every Australian child - has true equality of opportunity. We've got to work harder at it. I think, you know, the heartland issue for us is the gap; the gap in life expectancy in this country.
We all of us have a reputation, something we are known for, and sometimes it may be different from what we would like to be known for. At the core of this is the simple but fragile heart - our integrity - which is always under challenge, under tests both trivial and profound every day of our lives.
For a very long time now I've been saying to young women, 'You can have it all, but not all at the same time.' How important it is to take very good care of yourself, of your mental and physical and spiritual wellbeing; it's hard to do. It's easier to be a workaholic than to have a truly balanced life.
All women need support when they're having their babies and their little families are in formation. I have to say I have a lot of concern about the numbers of women - and men, now - who are not getting the support that they need. There are not the families and the communities around that there used to be.
Livelihoods and whole communities throughout the Murray-Darling Basin have been imperilled by the workings of drought, fire, flood, acid mud and human action over many decades. In the rescues and the cleanups and the long hauls, I see the same attitude over and again. People just rally and get on with it.
In business, integrity is just as important as in any of the great public offices... but I believe one of the first and fundamental obligations of competent business leadership is above all to protect the reputation and integrity of the business - to that degree the integrity of the business is the integrity of the leader.
I saw one of my primary tasks was to do what I could to restore confidence, to ensure that people knew and cared about their predicament and that governments were committed to helping. Equally an optimism had to be engendered, a belief that not only would they recover but would emerge 'bigger, brighter and better than ever.'
But the people of the disaster area fundamentally needed to understand that the rest of Australia had noticed their misery and their stoicism and their intense sense of community and determination to arise from the sodden wreckage of their homes, and that Australians would dig deep to help. I helped to describe the community ethos which quickly triumphed over incipient despair. It is this mobilisation of the unifying spirit that thrills us all, even as we mourn.
It's instructive to consider the more spectacular and well-known falls from grace of leaders in the public eye... In the main, the issues behind these falls could be grouped under a lack of competence, a lack of support or loyalty from those they sought to lead, and a lack of failure of integrity. Of all these the last is the most egregious, the most fatal. We so much want our leaders to be unfailingly decent that an obvious or perceived flaw in integrity can be the toxin which kills them off.