Bob Hawke quotes:

Unless and until something concrete is done about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue you won't get a real start on the war against terrorism.

There is no doubt that this government and this country are benefiting from the reforms that we brought in the 1980s, and that couldn't have been done without the co-operation of the trade union movement.

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.

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.

Institutions do live on their history.

I had no time for Indira Gandhi. She was too much in the Russian camp for my liking.

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.

The things which are most important don't always scream the loudest.

By 1990, no Australian child will be living in poverty.

We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.

We will not allow to become a political issue in this country the question of Asianisation.

You've got to remember the Cold War was a very real thing then, so the relationship with the United States was very, very important. As was the relationship that I was developing with China: that was something I did very much. And they weren't conflicting things.

I really had very little to do with Pierre Trudeau. He was off the scene very soon.

I had a very close relationship with [Brian] Mulroney.

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.

I think it is just stupid economics for a government to approach economic management from a strand of thinking regarding unions as enemies.

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.

I can't speak with authority about Emeka Anyaoku. I just didn't know him that well.

Do you know why I have credibility? Because I don't exude morality.

I just loved him and he loved me... He was a most humble man, the most decent man I've ever met in my life and he always looked for the best in people to find positives and he said something to me that always remained with me. He said if you believe in the fatherhood of God you must necessarily believe in the brotherhood of man, it follows necessarily and even though I left the church and was not religious, that truth remained with me.

I said to my people, "We're knocking apartheid off but we've got to be prepared to assist them." And I sent senior people over there to assist the incoming South African regime to go about the economic plan.

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.

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.

I find a fence a very uncomfortable place to squat my bottom.

The world will not wait for us.

I was used on a number of occasions by the United States and China as a conduit. For instance, I was up there talking with the Chinese leadership and they said to me that they were a bit concerned that the Americans had a misunderstanding about their relationship with the Soviets. There was some suggestion that there was a rapprochement developing between China and the Soviets, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

In sum, the truth is that we luxuriate in the comfortable assertion that women enjoy equality. We have salved our consciences by eliminating the more obvious discriminations like unequal rates of pay for work of equal value. But, in fact, we have not eliminated the inheritance of the millennia that women are lesser beings, an inheritance which still manifests itself in a whole range of prejudice and other forms of discrimination.

It was very much an Australian/New Zealand initiative to have a nuclear free South Pacific. And the Americans were very apprehensive about this. So, I explained to them that, as far as I was concerned, this didn't involve any diminution in our commitment to the ANZUS relationship. But David Lange took it further and he barred visits of US nuclear warships to New Zealand.

I told [ David Lange] he was crazy, because you can't have an alliance relationship if you refuse access to their ships. And the Americans wanted to punish him very severely and I intervened there and softened them somewhat. They wanted to really take some tough, reactive measures to New Zealand.

[John Howard] led the Government. They had the numbers, and just basically automatically went along with the Americans.

George Bush Junior [George W Bush] was a religious fanatic, and Tony Blair wasn't far behind in a way.

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.

I think there are a number of reasons, not least of which is the personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]. It's very easy to underrate her significance. I think she finds the Commonwealth and her position as Head of the Commonwealth infinitely more interesting than being the Queen of England, because she has no significant role in the latter.

There is a reciprocal respect for [ Elizabeth II], for her interest in the Commonwealth. The members of the Commonwealth recognise that here is a genuine interest from the top. So, that's one reason. I'm not putting it necessarily in order of importance.

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.

Brian Mulroney, myself, [and] Rajiv Gandhi; I think that was the real core [of the Commonwealth ]. That was the engine room, I reckon.

I don't know who described Mahathir [bin Mohamad] as a pillar of the Commonwealth, but they don't know what they're talking about.

I led the fight here against apartheid as President of the ACTU, including particularly the Springbok tour in 1971. And that led to the banning of the South African cricket tour which had been scheduled - that was something that I sorted out with Sir Donald Bradman. That was interesting.

It was the South African Government that has introduced politics into sport by decreeing politically that no non-white person will represent their country. They introduced politics into sport." And Don [Bradman] was a very shrewd old bloke, and he looked at me for about thirty seconds and then he said, "Bob, I've got no answer to that." And that was it.

As far as we're concerned, there was no sporting organisation [that] should have anything to do with the sport in South Africa.

I assumed the leadership within the Commonwealth for the fight against apartheid. I was very much assisted by Brian Mulroney, the Prime Minister of Canada, [and] Rajiv Gandhi, when he became the Prime Minister of India. And there were trade sanctions.

I rang my friend Jim Wolfensohn, who was then running a private commercial bank in New York. I said, "Come up to Vancouver", and he did. I put my proposition to him. He said, "I think it could work." I said, "Will you help us?" He said, "Yes." So, I set aside senior people in our treasury and they worked with Wolfensohn and the investment sanctions were applied. 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.

[ Rajiv Gandhi] was very reflective and rueful and regretful about the fact that his children's education...He wanted them to get educated outside of India, but he said to me the only place that he found where they would be safe was in Russia, and he didn't really want them to be educated there! So, I said, "Well, send them to Australia. I'll look after them." And my security bloke went absolutely bloody bananas, and I said, "We'll look after them." But, in the end, he didn't send them.

I respected [Margaret Thatcher] enormously. She had great integrity in that respect.

Geoffrey [Howe] and I were mates, and he disagreed with [ Margaret Thatcher] position. So, we cooperated surreptitiously.

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.

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.

If you've got good chemistry at the top, it's an enormous help. It's easy to have good chemistry with some, not so easy with others. With [Robert Mugabe], for example.

[ Rajiv Gandhi] was such an infinitely more attractive leader than his mother.

I believe [ Rajiv Gandhi] had a real sense that he would be assassinated.

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. There were two aspects I remember: one is him saying how he had trouble with his security people, because they insisted he wears a vest. He said it was very uncomfortable and he often took it off, but of course, in the end, it wouldn't have mattered if he'd been wearing three vests - he would have been gone.

It was a remarkable relationship. Margaret [Thatcher] and I had a love/hate relationship. She was always defending the South African regime and we had some terrible fights, including an enormous one in Canada.

All the arguments there are against Malcolm [Turnbull] - and there are many - the one thing in which he is impeccable and why I would support him in this is that he has an absolutely impeccable record on the question of colour and race. People often wondered why. What I see as a possible explanation is [that] he came from a very wealthy family - a 'squattocracy' - and he had private education at home and then he went to boarding school at Melbourne Grammar School, one of those lead schools in Australia.

I had a good personal relationship with Lee Kuan Yew and I used him, in the sense, that he... He made a statement in 1980, and he said in that statement that, "If Australia keeps going the way it is, it will finish up the poor, white trash of Asia." And he was right, because we were just going backwards.

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.

When George Bush Senior [George HW Bush] was getting his alliance together to go into Iraq - to kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait - he rang me up. I was very close to George Bush Senior; I got to know him well as Vice President to Ronald Reagan. And George rang me up and said, "Oh, Bob," he said, "I'm having trouble with Brian [Mulroney]." He said, "He's got a big wheat trade with Iraq, and he doesn't want to upset that." I said, "You leave it with me."

The personality of the Queen [ Elizabeth II]... For instance, once she goes - if she's ever going to die, it seems to be questionable - if Charles [of Wales] were there, whether there'd be the same sort of cement is very questionable, I think.

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, I guess. And there is still - I'm out of touch with it now, of course - but I still think there is a degree of cooperation at the economic level, to some extent, with the more developed countries helping the less developed. How substantial that is now, I simply am not versed.

I rang Brian [Mulroney] up. I said, "What's this bloody nonsense. You've got a wheat trade with Iraq and you won't come aboard?" I said, "We've got a bloody big wheat trade too, so get your priorities right." And he said, "Okay, Bob. I'll come." I rang George and he was very appreciative.

[ 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.

She [ Elizabeth II] is, you know, "Do-what-you're-told, Lady". But in the Commonwealth, she is much more than just a figurehead.

Bill Heseltine had been at university with me, at the University of Western Australia. I knew him well.

One of the features of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings was [that] she [ Elizabeth II] would have a meeting with each of them. You'd have an allotted time.

One other thing: at the meeting in Canada, [there was] the coup in Fiji. This comes to an important part of the Commonwealth: the role of the Queen [Elizabeth II]. I had absolutely just enormous respect for her as leader of the Commonwealth. You could talk to her about any of the fifty-one countries of the Commonwealth and you could have an intelligent conversation with her about the economics, the politics. She really immersed herself in the Commonwealth.

I wrote a letter to our Australian newspaper about three weeks before the invasion and I said, "Osama bin Laden must be on his knees morning and night praying to Allah that the Americans will invade." And, of course, he was, because nothing more advanced his cause - the cause of terrorism - than the invasion of Iraq. It was an absurdity.

[Malcolm Turnbull] went straight from Melbourne Grammar to Oxford. And he would have been a very lonely person, and I think he probably met a lot of black students there who were also probably lonely. I think he formed friendships with them, which established his judgement about the question of color. That's my theory. I don't know whether it's right or not, but that's what I always respected about Malcolm. He was absolutely, totally impeccable on the question of race and color.