Most Australians did not love a sunburnt country. Farmers preferred a reliable rainfall; bank managers and city merchants preferred to deal with cust… - Geoffrey Blainey

Every nation has the right to control its own immigration. To shape sensibly an immigration policy is to influence nearly every facet of life, now and for generations to come.

Those who one-sidedly depict the early European history of Australia are endangering one of the gains of recent years: the willingness to examine the long years of traditional Aboriginal history with sympathy and understanding. Just as the history of European Australia can be denounced from a one-sided point of view, so too can the history of black Australia be depicted by the one-eyed as a story of savagery. To revert to such denunciations would be a loss to all Australians, black and white.

The birth of a nation called for many fathers, none of whom could be pre-eminent, and when Parkes died the federation was only a balloon floating beckoningly in the air.