Tony Abbott

“I don't think my religious convictions should be held against me.”

“All of the people who are using their BlackBerries or their iPhones, Facebook, all of the people who are sitting in cafes and hotels rooms doing their work, they're all using wireless technology, and we shouldn't assume that the only way of the future is high speed cable.”

“I have close family members as well as lots of close friends who are gay. Many of them strongly support gay marriage.”

“I want to see an end to sovereign risk questions over Australia.”

“I try to treat people as people and not put them in pigeonholes.”

“Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.”

“I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to be asked.”

“You cannot win an election without a fight.”

“Faith is important to me. It's important to millions of Australians. It helps to shape who I am. It helps to shape my values. But it must never, never dictate my politics.”

“Oppositions are not there to get legislation through. Oppositions are there to hold the government to account.”

“Now if you are condemned to life on welfare, I'm not so sure that being in a bigger welfare village is that much better than being in a smaller welfare village.”

“I mean there are many, many people in all sorts of different countries who don't have a great life, who are subject to injustice. Are we obliged to take all of them who come here? I think the answer is 'Not necessarily.'”

“There are no factions in the Liberal Party.”

“Climate change is crap.”

“For small business people, less paperwork means higher profits, boosted sales and more time with the family.”

“The truth is I try to take people as I find them.”

“It's very easy for Australians living in big cities to either romanticise or demonise the situation in Aboriginal places - to kind of look at things through the 'noble innocents' prism or through the 'chronically dysfunctional' prism, and I suspect that is so often the case.”

“I see myself as a social conservative, but I think that there are lots of social institutions that produce beneficial reforms, like public hospitals, for instance, and schools.”

“The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother's convenience.”

“I'm not running for canonisation.”