If there is a pandemic, international travel will almost cease I suspect for a significant period of time.

I don’t think my religious convictions should be held against me.

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 that people should come to Australia through the front door, not through the back door. If people want a migration outcome, they should go through the migration channels.

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

I think leadership is knowing what you want to achieve and then purposefully and sensibly taking steps to achieve it, remembering always that you have got to bring people with you if you are seeking...

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

This is an illustration of a new sectarianism where somebody is considered incapable of making an objective decision because they hold ethical, philosophical or religious views.

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.

You cannot win an election without a fight.

Political parties don’t work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.

I am in favour of the notion of Australia as an immigrant society.

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

The sky is where mathematics and magic become one.

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

You try turning up in America without documents, without a visa, without a passport; you’ll be treated as very, very much illegal.

If we boost productivity, we can improve economic growth.

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 would not want to see any relaxation of the law prohibiting human cloning.

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...

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.

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

To move past fear is a cliche.

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.

We just can’t stop people from being homeless if that’s their choice.

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

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...

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

There are no factions in the Liberal Party.

I instinctively try to protect people from filth.

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

I do enjoy exercise, not because I am an exercise junkie but because it’s terrific stress release.

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

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...

I think that marriage is, dare I say it, between a man and a woman, hopefully for life and there are all sorts of other relationships which should be acknowledged and recognised, but I don’t...

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

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.

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...

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.

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...

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

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.

This is a government which takes national security seriously and that’s not just national security against terrorism, it is national security against all forms of threat, including biological threat,

You know what it’s like—you see someone on the train screaming awful, racist things and think, ‘How can I protect this person’s right to free speech?

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.

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...

I’m not running for canonisation.

A tax cut to compensate for a tax increase is not a cut – it’s a con.

The best way of ensuring that you don’t get infected with something like this, in the absence of an effective vaccine, would be isolation,

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