Allan Behm > Quotes

“Our voice is as large as we want it to be ... For Australia, it is not question of capacity. It is a question of agency.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“Like Australia, America is beset by its inability to come to terms with its racial diversity and the deep misogyny that affects so many aspects of its way of life.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“When 'interchangeability' replaces 'interoperability', insecurity morphs into subservience.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“When 'laissez-faire' becomes a synonym for laziness and role subordination to more senior (and more dominant) prime ministers and defence ministers, the national interest is sacrificed on the altar of short-term political expediency.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“With its manifest insecurities, Australia has a sense of dependency that America has filled for over eighty years. On whom would Australia depend, however, if it could not depend on America? That is the question that Australia cannot answer, and that it cannot bring itself to contemplate.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“The legacy of the Boomer generation is little more than consumerism, escapism, passivism, racism, self-satisfaction and spectatorism.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“Australia has felt insecure and in need of protection since European settlement. It will probably continue to do so for decades to come.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“Australia's failure to adopt the constitutional amendments that would have recognised prior occupation of the continent by the First Peoples and their right to a constitutional voice indicate that racism is not even subcutaneous.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship

“simply admitting an inability to delegate and empower.”
― Allan Behm, No, Minister: So You Want To Be A Chief Of Staff?

“Alone among the community of nations, only Australia and America define any departure from groupthink and conformity as 'un-Australian' and 'un-American'.”
― Allan Behm, The Odd Couple: Re-configuring the America-Australia relationship