Best 9 quotes of Donald Horne on MyQuotes

A man who went to the 'footie' match on Saturday afternoon and played eighteen holes of golf was really doing his duty by the nation.

Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck.

Fair-goes are not only for oneself, but for underdogs. Even in international sporting matches Australians have been known to switch from their own side to that of a gallant challenger. Australians love a 'battler', an underdog who is fighting the top dog, although their veneration for him is likely to pass if he comes out from under.

Only in sport? The qualification would seem meaningless to many Australians. What also is there that matters as much as sport? It is only in sport that many Australians express those approaches to life that are un-Australian if expressed in any other connection.

With sport went beer drinking and gambling - until recently restricted by the wowsers, but part of that code of mateship of men, that necessity constantly to demonstrate masculine sameness, which provided one of the most flattening sources of uniformity.

It may be that only when xenophobia stops working as an election winner will the way be cleared for a return to bipartisanship

Regional interests and loyalties are even stronger among Australians than among Americans - in that in social life they exist almost without challenge. Canberra is a poor thing compared to Washington and there is no great metropolis like New York that sets many of the nation's trends. There is no generally acknowledged central city where the important things are believed to happen and it seems better to be.

...the first move to a more tolerant Australia must come from controlling the aversion to Muslims that is at present the principal xenophobia in this country.

The ideal of the rule of law, along with equality under the law, is one of the bases of tolerance. It means that, one way or another, governments themselves must act in accordance with the law- a responsibility they sometimes try to evade. The treatment of asylum seekers in Australia is an example, where successive Commonwealth governments have produced a series of changes to the law. In a liberal-democratic society the rule of law also means that there must be open discussion about those laws and how they are being upheld in the courts. It also means predictability- known rules about the relationship between people and governments, and in certain matters, between individuals. It is intended to mean fairness - no one should be condemned unheard, and hearings must be carried out openly by courts or tribunals as independent of governments as possible. (In their wars against asylum seekers, governments have shuffled procedures around as if they were fairground illusionists.)