Bill Shorten Quotes

The membership survey was a great moment for inner-party democracy. We can't go back, nor do we want to. Our members are pouring their hearts into this campaign. But people don't join the Social Democrats party just to put up posters. They join because they want to help steer the party.

Good ideas are the backbone of good government.

My colleagues have expressed confidence in my ability to articulate our conservative message and to provide new focus to our efforts in the General Assembly.

Sometimes in this country, we don't focus a lot on people's experience and their resume. Mitt Romney would be the most experienced executive to be nominated since 1952. The fundamental task for the next president is going to be fixing things, cleaning things up, being a turnaround artist, if you will.

The American people deserve long-term, forward-thinking policies.

As governor, I learned the importance of having an agenda.

You can't consider a president weak because he will have a Congress that Mexican voters have wanted to be co-responsible in the decisions to be taken... It will be through the leadership that I will exercise that we will be able to build the agreements in Congress.

If the leadership can't win a debate, then we should show true leadership and implement the democratic will of our party.

The foundations of democratic transition should be laid in accordance with a sincere and committed strategy that is supported by various policy tools, and implemented wisely.

Well they have an input into policy but in the end governments are elected to put together policy but the good thing about the Wentworth Group is that you know you've got 11 pretty capable people with a lot of good ideas.

Obama and his associates are fantastic campaigners but have little ability or skill to govern.

I hesitated, too, because for better or worse, I have been one of the principal architects of New Labour and I have worked closely with Tony Blair and the team for nearly 20 years.

If elected Speaker, I promise you that we will have the courage to lead the fight for our conservative principles and make our case to the American people. But we will also have the wisdom to listen to our constituents and each other so that we always move forward together.

The function of the politician, therefore, is one of continuous watchfulness and activity, and he must have intimate knowledge of details if he would work out grand results.

We hope that there will be better policy-making and hope to see projects implemented. We have lots of information that can be used for the implementation of projects.

The statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his nation's experience and his vision.

The distinction between a statesman and a politician is that the former imposes his will and his ideas on his environment while the latter adopts himself to it.

Good organization does not necessarily mean it will produce good policy. But bad organization will almost never produce good policy.

There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions. The Government listen too much to the pollsters and the party managers. The trouble is that they are not even very good at politics, and they are entering too much into policy decisions. As a result, there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events. We give the impression of being in office but not in power. Far too many important decisions are made for 36 hours' publicity.

One cannot guarantee that if we have good intelligence, good policy will necessarily follow. But we can guarantee that if we have poor intelligence, poor policy will necessarily follow.

I have presidential size policy ambition. I just don't have presidencial size personal ambition.

Grooming a successor, is it an inheritance? In a democratic party, you don't want leaders appointed that way. They have to be appointed properly by the people.

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

I research best practices and recipes for success and failure to craft personalised policies for my city.

Practically, systemic thinking can be used to identify problems, analyze their boundaries, design strategies and policy interventions, forecast and measure their expected impacts, implement them, and monitor and evaluate their successes and failures.