Tony Abbott

“I think anything which improves services is in principle a good thing.”

“A tax cut to compensate for a tax increase is not a cut - it's a con.”

“If I was in a refugee camp somewhere on the Pakistani border, of course I'd want to come to Australia.”

“Certainly, my uni days involved some statements that I wouldn't make today.”

“If people are going to do things which have certain consequences that they would rather avoid, they should do whatever they need to avoid the consequences.”

“The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the 'seagull syndrome' - we fly in, scratch around and fly out.”

“To move past fear is a cliche.”

“I understand that government should live within its means, value the money it holds in trust from you the taxpayer, avoid waste and, above all else, observe the first maxim of good government: namely, do no avoidable harm.”

“I instinctively try to protect people from filth.”

“The Australian public are very fair and they are always prepared to give the leader of a major political party a fair go.”

“What I would like to see is sufficiently good education and health services being delivered to Aboriginal people so that they are prepared and ready to leave and join the economic mainstream if that's their choice.”

“We just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice.”

“I think my wife and my kids are incredibly good to allow me to stay in public life given that they have to cop a whole lot of collateral attention that, being human, they'd rather not get.”

“I think that the best things that governments can do for productivity is not whack on new taxes and, if we can get institutions like schools and hospitals functioning better, well that's obviously good for the overall productiveness of our society.”

“Once people come to Australia, they join the team.”

“The smart way to improve broadband is not to junk the existing network but to make the most of it. It's to let a competitive market deliver the speeds that people need at an affordable price with government improving infrastructure in the areas where market competition won't deliver it.”

“Well, I'm not saying that an emissions tax is ever going to be good policy.”

“I'm not saying that people on welfare don't contribute in their own way, but as many as possible should be encouraged to be economically active as well as socially and culturally active.”

“Both Mum and Dad were converts to Catholicism, and normally if you convert to Catholicism you have thought about it more than someone who just grew up with it, taking it for granted.”

“I think that political marriages are subject to more strain than most precisely because of the nature of politics.”