John Reginald Williams (born 16 January 1955) is an Australian politician. He has been a National Party member of the Australian Senate since July 2008, representing the state of New South Wales.
Williams was first elected to the Senate at the 2007 federal election. This followed his victory over incumbent Senator Sandy Macdonald in preselection for the National Party's one winnable spot on the Coalition Senate ticket in New South Wales.
Williams was born in Jamestown, South Australia. Prior to entering politics, he was a truck driver, a farmer, a sheep shearer and a small business owner.
Williams vote was the third out of five votes required to give maverick Barnaby Joyce the Senate leadership in September 2008.
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“Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 3:4.
“the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies
lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,
beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up
they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising
in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.”
—William Carlos Williams (1883–1963)
“In the far South the sun of autumn is passing
Like Walt Whitman walking along a ruddy shore.
He is singing and chanting the things that are part of him,
The worlds that were and will be, death and day.
Nothing is final, he chants. No man shall see the end.
His beard is of fire and his staff is a leaping flame.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“I just come and talk to the plants, really—very important to talk to them, they respond I find.”
—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)
“[M]y conception of liberty does not permit an individual citizen or a group of citizens to commit acts of depredation against nature in such a way as to harm their neighbors and especially to harm the future generations of Americans. If many years ago we had had the necessary knowledge, and especially the necessary willingness on the part of the Federal Government, we would have saved a sum, a sum of money which has cost the taxpayers of America two billion dollars.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)