Nobody has mentioned ^& so I'm not sure what that is! I just felt sure there had to be a way to write a macro which would find in a piece of selected text first of all the ascii for 'opening straight quote', replace it with an 'opening curly quote' then do the same for the parallel closing quotes. As the saying goes, it shouldn't be rocket science (and I do rocket science! - well, astronomy anyway) hence the name.
While on the subject of names, I love yours... macropods = kangaroos, yes?