lawyers-from-australia

"I am particularly privileged to have observed first-hand the skill and dedication of the commission's staff who deserve great credit for the exposure of corruption in this state,"

"Tendering her resignation on Wednesday, Ms Latham said she was grateful for the opportunity to have worked at ICAC."

"Australia is not really on the map for many people overseas, but we were shocked and disappointed recently when we had so many people approach us and comment on our poor policy towards refugees."

"I did the first murder trial in which the evidence of battered-woman syndrome was admitted in Victoria. But I have a constant awareness that cases have, at heart, personal human tragedies affecting many more people than the accused."

"It's always disturbing to be confronted with inhumanity and depravity. I find it very hard to accept that thinking, feeling human beings can direct killing. Ordinary family men engage in mass rape. They must dehumanise their victims. They don't see them as human beings. The accused could be your next-door neighbour, they look so ordinary these commanders."

"These war crime trials are to let the world know these crimes won't be tolerated by the international community, that crimes against humanity by any nation or individual will be dealt with."

""We respect her decision not to apply for one of the three new commissioner positions," he said in a statement."

"Despite claims Ms Latham was effectively being forced out of the top job as payback for her investigation into the Liberal Party donations scandal, the changes were swiftly passed through parliament last week."

"Ms Latham, whose term was due to end in 2019, was given no guarantee she would be appointed as one of three new commissioners set to take over the Independent Commission Against Corruption under the Baird government's plans to radically overhaul the agency."

"AAP Megan Latham quits over ICAC shake-up Nov 23, 2016"

"Ah, Love, the earth is woe’s And sadly helpers needs: And, till its burden goes, Our work is—where it bleeds."

"Jules Renald has said, "It is not how old you are but how you are old." The way I was old today on my eightieth birthday is that I have just entered the infancy of middle age."

"All that we love in olden lands and lore Was signal of her coming long ago! Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More, And Plato’s eyes were with her star aglow!"

"‘Be true, be brave, be merciful, be free!’"

"This is a rune I ravelled in the still, Arrogant stare of an Australian cow."

"When, comrades, we thrill to the message of speaker in highway or hall, The voice of the poet is reaching the silenter poet in all: And again, as of old, when the flames are to leap up the turrets of Wrong, Shall the torch of the New Revolution be lit from the words of a Song!"

"Are you for Light, and trimmed, with oil in place, Or but a Will o’ Wisp on marshy quest? A new demesne for Mammon to infest? Or lurks millennial ’neath your face?"

"And our reward? In this wan land, In clientage of Greed, Despised, polluted, maimed and banned, To wander and—to breed."

"They teach and live the Golden Rule Of Young Democracy:—‘That culture, joy and goodliness Be th’ equal right of all: That Greed no more shall those oppress Who by the wayside fall:‘That each shall share what all men sow: That colour, caste’s a lie: That man is God, however low— Is man, however high.’"

"There is no age more dangerous than old age."

"The world of adolescence was all I was interested in exploring, I suppose because there is no other period in your life when you feel as intensely. Love, hate, jealousy, loyalty: I remember the power of these emotions as a teenager and how navigating questions of identity at the same time was truly terrifying and exhilarating. Writing in that moment of a person’s life has always felt so right to me."

"Distance in time has made my voice less contrived and subjective. I don’t feel I’m writing some kind of diary (which I kind of felt I was doing when I was 16). I am far more conscious of my voice and more disciplined in separating myself from my characters…"

"The relationship between reader and writer in fiction is steeped in vulnerabilities. It really does require trust and faith because some books have the power to transform people. You feel like you can never go back, look at the world in the same way again. And that grand ambition is what I hope to do with my books because at the heart of my writing is a passion for telling stories of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the misunderstood."

"I love the stuff and material of writing: words. The games you can play with them. The rhythm and lyricism in a good passage of writing. The power of a simple sentence. I also love the paradoxical bind of writing as both freedom and constraint. You start creating characters and scenes out of thin air. But if you do it well enough, that freedom constricts, because your characters are no longer inside you. They become their own people, agents on the page who need to act and think and feel in ways true to who they are…"

"To the Muslim woman, the hijab provides a sense of empowerment. It is a personal decision to dress modestly according to the command of a genderless Creator; to assert pride in self, and embrace one's faith openly, with independence and courageous conviction."

"Well the laws of Australia prevail in Australia, I can assure you of that. The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia.""

"Right after the inauguration, President Trump made introductory phone calls to foreign heads of state. His conversation with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, a close US ally, was a sign of what was to come. The prime minister pressed the president on whether he would follow through on a deal on refugees previously negotiated between the two countries. "This deal would make me look terrible," he reportedly told Turnbull. "I think it is a horrible deal, a disgusting deal that I would have never made." Despite the prime minister's attempts to reason with him, Trump shut down the conversation. "I have had it. I have been making these calls all day, and this is the most unpleasant call all day." Then he hung up."

"Colonel Vaughn shot well. He bought us five hundred years."

"It is not normal for a Deputy Prime Minister to end up running a Prime Minister's diary, chairing staff meetings. It's not normal for a Deputy Prime Minister to be trying to manage so that quality speeches are given."

"I don't think it would have been possible ... You always have choices, yes, but I don't think there was any way of stuffing the genie back into the bottle."

"I always had this long shadow from the way in which I became Prime Minister, and active steps were taken basically every day of my prime ministership to have that shadow become darker and darker, not lighter and lighter."

"I was very conscience that if you put even your toe on this very sticky piece of paper, then you would be caught on it."

"There is nothing that should lead you to expect bastardry of that magnitude. Hard things happen; a hard thing happened to Malcolm Turnbull, a hard thing happened to Bob Hawke, a hard thing happened Kim Beazley, a hard thing happened to Kevin Rudd, a hard thing happened to me. You can still make choices on how you conduct yourself."

"I really don’t know why this wasn’t a career ending moment for Tony Abbott. Sexism is no better than racism."

"When there was bad behaviour – and Kevin consistently danced right out on that line of bad behaviour – I couldn’t do that much to discipline him because the nature of minority government is kind of everybody’s got their hand on the grenade and anybody could pull the pin."

"It did seem to me that tomorrow you could wake up to anything, and that there just are no rules anymore."

"It was inconceivable to me that the kind of anti-Labor work that Kevin had been involved in – the destabilisation, the leaking – would be rewarded by the leadership."

"You've got to gather yourself, you've got to give the speech, go see the Governor-General, do all of that. And then you get to have a few drinks with friends, so that's not that hard."

"I don’t see what alternate reality was possible other than the one’s we lived through. So I think people are really wistfully hoping for something that was never going to be."

"We have got to get to grips with this, and we have to ask ourselves as feminists a fairly difficult and deep question about whether we have in our rhetoric and campaigning for gender equality been as careful as we should be to explain that actually gender equality will be better for everyone."

"This isn't about women getting unfair advantages, it's about creating a world where nobody is hemmed in by gender stereotypes, and that's better for men and for women."

"I could hear the forces massing. I was very keen to make sure that I got our big reforms done before those forces could reach a critical point."

"I don't support the idea of a big Australia with arbitrary targets of, say, a 40 million-strong Australia or a 36 million-strong Australia. We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia... I support a population that our environment, our water, our soil, our roads and freeways, our busses, our trains and our services can sustain."

"Now I understand for Mr Downer and other members of the chattering classes in the Liberal Party: they might think what qualifies you to know about national security, is you sit in a minister's office typing press releases all of your lives, with the greatest risk to your personal safety being a papercut – Mr Downer might think that's appropriate; well I do not."

"What I believe, what the Labor Party believes, is that marriage is between a man and a woman."

"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead."

"I suggest Australians rush to their kitchens and check that their spoons aren't bent after that performance."

"I know the Leader of the Opposition [Tony Abbott] has an unhealthy kind of obsession with the so-called "faceless men in the Labor Party"; what he really should be obsessed about is the useless men sitting behind him."

"Will the misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet continue to circulate them? Yes, they will. And it wouldn't matter what I said and it wouldn't matter what documents were produced and it wouldn't matter what anybody else said, they will pursue this claim for motivations of their own which are malicious and not in any way associated with the facts."

"Here he [Abbott] is, trying to fudge one way and fudge the other; This morning he went out and accused me of a crime. Back it up or shut up."