George Brandis famous quotes

05-12-2025

The political bug first bit me was Malcolm Fraser's resignation from the Gorton Government.
-- George Brandis

#Government #Political #Bugs
I am the enemy of anything parochial.
-- George Brandis

#Enemy
We need to tell Australian stories,we need to encourage and fund and present Australian work but we also need to understand that for a sophisticated, educated, culturally aware, modern nation we can't be parochial.
-- George Brandis

#Needs #Stories #Sophisticated
The great works belong to no one nation, no one cultural tradition even. They are universal.
-- George Brandis

#Tradition #Great Work
The great works belong to no one nation, no one cultural tradition even. They are universal.I want an Australian vision of arts policy that is expansive, is embracing, is not narrow, is not parochial. For example, that Australians can do Shakespeare just as well as Englishmen can because we, like every civilised nation, partake of the great canonical works. It's not about Australian nationalism; it's about our identity as a culturally ambitious, culturally sophisticated nation.
-- George Brandis

#Art #Vision #Ambitious
We must break out of this mindset in Australia that we are a small nation on the other side of the world from the main, great Western nations. Australia is the twelfth largest economy in the world. We are a not insignificant player in commerce, in geopolitics and we must be in culture as well and we are.
-- George Brandis

#Player #Australia #Culture
Opera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.
-- George Brandis

#Years #Australia #Example
I think it's important to have a blend just as we need to have by the way a mix of different opera companies and different arts companies.
-- George Brandis

#Art #Thinking #Important
I think the cultural programming on the ABC is one of the glories of the ABC.
-- George Brandis

#Thinking #Glory #Programming
I'm reading Barnaby Rudge, one of the less well-known Dickens novels. I've been a life-long lover of Charles Dickens ever since I think A Tale of Two Cities was the first Dickens novel I read.
-- George Brandis

#Reading #Thinking #Cities
The thing about Dickens is you either love him or you hate him and I fell in love with Dickens, I fell in love with his prose style and I decided that I wanted to read the whole Dickens verve during the course of my life.
-- George Brandis

#Hate #Style #Wanted
I am a very, very strong advocate of the notion that we shouldn't equate the arts with other aspects of infrastructure. They have a unique role in any civilised society and that requires appropriate and targeted government support.
-- George Brandis

#Art #Strong #Unique
The arts are part of a nation's identity, they are part of a nation's soul and when we look at a country from the eyes of people overseas they are part of a nations branding in the world as it were.
-- George Brandis

#Country #Art #Eye
The tyranny of distance is such an important element of policy and the allocation of resources.
-- George Brandis

#Distance #Important #Elements
I'd say about Malcolm Fraser, as he said about himself, is that he was always, from the day he entered Parliament in 1955 until the day he died today, was a Liberal.
-- George Brandis

#Today #Parliament #Said
Let's be frank: if there are hardened terrorists [Australian] who are fighting overseas, we don't want to see those people come back to our shores. But if we could stop youngsters, teenagers from falling into the snares of ISIL or Jabhat al-Nusra or other terrorist organisations through parental intervention and other strategies then, we hope to be able to rescue them before they commit these crimes.
-- George Brandis

#Teenager #Fall #Fighting
Malcolm Fraser, in the marrow of his bones, despised racism. He despised people who discriminated against other people because they were different and in particular because of the colour of their skin, and I don't think there has been a time in Australian politics where there has been more attention to the importance of that value.
-- George Brandis

#Thinking #Racism #People
I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again.
-- George Brandis

#Teenager #Piano #Pieces
There wasn't a lot of music in the home when I was growing up. We didn't have a piano or anything like that but my grandmother, had been a well-known piano teacher.
-- George Brandis

#Teacher #Growing Up #Home
I've never been one of those people, who subscribe to this notion that the book is dead.
-- George Brandis

#Book #People #Notion
We have a great literary tradition in Australia. I think the book is very much alive and the more people who are encouraged to read books the better our society will be and the wiser our society will be.
-- George Brandis

#Book #Thinking #Australia
As a Liberal of course I am very strongly committed to the notion of artistic freedom and very hostile to the idea of there being a single view of cultural policy dictated from on high.
-- George Brandis

#Views #Ideas #Artistic
I think it displayed what the Australia Council does so well, the awarding of artists who at various steps in their career had been encouraged by the Australia Council.
-- George Brandis

#Artist #Thinking #Careers
I think it's very, very important that people outside the capital cities, not just Sydney and Melbourne but also Brisbane Perth Adelaide and so on, have the greatest access to the best cultural experiences they can in both the performing arts and the visual arts.
-- George Brandis

#Art #Thinking #Cities
You can't be selective about freedom of speech. If you say you believe in freedom of speech you have to acknowledge the people whose views you disagree with, people whose views you may detest, nevertheless have the right to freedom of speech.
-- George Brandis

#Believe #Views #People

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