Loose cannons

Issue 

Non-joker

@lctext = "You ask people here, and they'll tell you I never tell jokes." — Brendan Nelson, Liberal candidate for the safe federal seat of Bradfield, after a dirty joke at a Liberal fundraising dinner fell flat.

Trotskyist view

@lctext = "He took a very Trotskyist view that nothing was right, everything was a secret and a conspiracy, and developed a view of the world that he was being oppressed and denied information." — An unnamed NRMA director on Richard Talbot, the director prominent in the fight to prevent the NRMA from being privatised, as quoted in Business Review Weekly, July 10.

You're wrong!

@lctext = "If there is a perception of arrogance then we have to overcome the perception, but I can assure you that is not the reality." — Keith De Lacy, Queensland treasurer, on the state election swing against the ALP.

Turnabout

@lctext = "Myself and the government deserve a dose of castor oil. I've been taking it every day since [the election], and ... I hope it's good for me." — Queensland (barely) Premier Wayne Goss, indicating that the voters have given him the shits.

Arrangements

@lctext = "I can tell you that there have been some very interesting propositions put to me on the basis of which I was to be anointed for Batman, and I haven't been prepared to enter into those arrangements." — ACTU president Martin Ferguson, saying he won't do factional deals to win preselection for the safe Labor seat. Federal intervention has been rumoured as likely if Ferguson doesn't win.

Not good enough

@lctext = "If people want to use this facility it's not good enough that they have to queue three, four or five deep." — Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett on hospitals? No. He was talking about expanding the Crown Casino.

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