Loose cannons

Issue 

No exceptions

"Anything is available to be sold if the price is right." — Ron Ward, general manager of TNT Harbourlink, which owns the Sydney monorail, on suggestions that the eyesore might be removed by government.

Read my intentions

"We don't regard child-care as a welfare measure ... we regard it as ... a work-related expense, that is, as a right [of] taxpayers, with children, who work." — Paul Keating during the 1993 federal election campaign.

Like everything else

"We ... need to ensure that training reform is industry-driven." — PM Keating on vocational training.

For example

"Women are woefully under-represented in trade training and only half as many women as men receive financial or other support from their employer when they undertake education." — Keating, in the same speech, on the way industry has driven vocational training to date.

Of course

"Yes, I think I'm worth what I'm paid. Yes, of course I am." — Ed Wallis, chief executive of one of Britain's recently privatised major power companies, on his salary of $750,000 plus share options of $2.5 million.

No profits there

"Dreadful human beings." — British transport minister Steven Norris (a former car dealer) on people who use trains.

All for the family

"We were convinced that a winning campaign could have been raised. However, we chose to put our family first and to forego the disruption to our lives that a third straight national campaign would create." — Former US vice-president Dan Quayle, deciding not to run for president after several months of testing the water. Reportedly, not even the loony right was loony enough to back him.

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