Loose cannons

Issue 

Australian culture

@lctext = "She [Annita Keating ] is accompanying the orchestra and doing some PR for us and Australian culture. It is a cultural ambassador sort of thing." — Sydney Symphony Orchestra publicist on what the PM's wife will be doing on a three-week taxpayer-funded tour of Europe.

Caring

@lctext = "We're not a confrontational party; we're a sensitive, caring party." US Republican Senator Robert Dole, shortly before Congressional elections last November.

Not their problem

@lctext = "The Holocaust isn't our problem; it's all of Germany's problem." — Ernst Krienke, head of the IG Farben board, rejecting a proposal that the company pay survivors from the 350,000 slave labourers who worked in its factories during World War II.

Interests

@lctext = "Such a situation is not in the interests of either of the major parties, and it is not in the interests of those involved in the economic development of the state." — Barry O'Farrell, chair of the NSW Coalition's committee on electoral reform, on minor parties and independents holding the balance of power in the state's upper house.

On second thought

@lctext = "I had been wrong, when I thought on coming into office, that after seven years of change, much had been achieved and the problems had diminished." — NSW Police Commissioner Tony Lauer, retracting statements, made prior to the current Police Royal Commission, that corruption was not a major problem in the police force.

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