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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

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Bob Hawke
Age: 89 †
Born: 1929
Born: December 9
Died: 2019
Died: May 16
Former Prime Minister Of Australia
Politician
Trade Unionist
Union Organizer
Bordertown
South Australia
Australia
Robert James Lee Hawke
The Honourable Bob Hawke
Robert James Lee Bob Hawke
Lady
Told
Much
Figurehead
Elizabeth
Commonwealth

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The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.
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Don't talk to me about what's happened since [Nelson] Mandela! His successor was absolutely hopeless - no such thing as AIDS - and this present President... It's a tragedy, you know, what's happened there post-Mandela, because he was an iconic figure.
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By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.
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Peoples have come to experience that political structures and divisions of power are not immutable. 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.
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The essence of power is the knowledge that what you do is going to have an effect not just an immediate but perhaps a lifelong effect on the happiness and wellbeing of millions of people and so I think the essence of power is to be conscious of what it can mean for others.
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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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I believe [ Rajiv Gandhi] had a real sense that he would be assassinated.
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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.
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I really had very little to do with Pierre Trudeau. He was off the scene very soon.
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The concept there was that the small number of developed countries within the Commonwealth should provide assistance. This was not just financial but personal, providing experts and so on, to assist less developed members of the Commonwealth to get on the growing path. And that was part of what we did with South Africa.
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Do you know why I have credibility? Because I don't exude morality.
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In fact, soon after that [South African sanctions], I was going on an official visit to the UK and Margaret Thatcher instructed every minister to clear the decks of any outstanding matters between us - Australia and the Brits. And she went out of her way to make sure that that was as successful a visit as it possibly could be.
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I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.
Bob Hawke
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I went along with it, and wanted to appoint a significant figure in Malcolm Fraser. I didn't have high hopes that they'd be able to do anything, but something was worth a try.
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[ Rajiv Gandhi] was such an infinitely more attractive leader than his mother.
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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. And it did seem to me that one way that we could bring the apartheid regime down would be if we did mount an effective investment sanction.
Bob Hawke
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Brian Mulroney, myself, [and] Rajiv Gandhi I think that was the real core [of the Commonwealth ]. That was the engine room, I reckon.
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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. An assumption cannot be used to justify making second-class citizens of those who are unfortunate enough to constitute living proof of the inaccuracy of that assumption.
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I had a very close relationship with [Brian] Mulroney.
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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. 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