Loose cannons

Untruth in advertising

"People are going to buy the cheapest products available and we just can't compete with countries like China, which use slave labour." — Australian Made executive director Norm Spencer explaining the Buy Australia campaign.

Yeah, sure

"The Australian economy will be firmly set on the path to sustained growth. The tangible benefits of the hard slog of structural reform will be evident to every Australian." — Bob Hawke to the NSW ALP conference, December 7.

Cleverly concealed

"I think Paul Keating should be the prime minister of Australia immediately. He's tough but he's got the working people of Australia foremost in his mind. He's still got the kid from Bankstown in him." — NSW Attorney General Paul Whelan, to NSW ALP conference.

Free market

"In Utah, collectors were trying to get dinosaur fossils illegally off public lands, and they shot at federal agents who came to investigate. It has got so bad that some paleontologists will not go out and work in the area. There's a big market for fossils — you're talking megabucks." — Jack Pierce of the US Smithsonian Institute on one of the latest advances in science.

NSW justice

"We're a jailing state and I don't know why we should be. Why is it that so much higher a proportion of the population is in jail in NSW than in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland?" — John Coombs, president of the NSW Bar Association.

Give us your tired, your poor ...

"We do not see fit to protect everyone, no matter how moving their case may be, outside our territorial limits." — United States solicitor general Kenneth Starr on Haitian refugees turned away from the US. The Haitian government is involved in a Pinochet-style mass slaughter of oppositionists following a right-wing military coup.

Epitaph

"Far from going down as the man who saved this great national institution [the British Daily Mirror], he will be remembered, I'm afraid, as the man who nearly destroyed it. A thief and a liar." — Daily Mirror editor Richard Scott on deceased media magnate Robert Maxwell.

From GLW issue 39