I don’t bring religion into the square.
I do not regard myself as a Christian politician. I regard myself as a politician who just happens to think religion matters. I would be appalled, absolutely appalled, to think religion drove anyone’s politics in a secular democracy like ours.
I’ve always avoided those sorts of self-assessments because if you give yourself a 10 out of 10 people think you’re a big head, if you give yourself a 6 out of 10 they think you’re plagued with self-doubt, so I’m just not going to rate myself.
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.
It is fit that justice should be administered with great caution.
Although our powers are great, they are not unlimited they are bounded by some lines of demarcation.
I am extremely unwilling that we should take upon ourselves to exercise a jurisdiction which the law does not vest in us.
A presumption of any fact is, properly, an inferring of that fact from other facts that are known; it is an act of reasoning; and much of human knowledge on all subjects is derived from this source.
Prima facie, every estate, whether given by will or otherwise, is supposed to be beneficial to the party to whom it is so given.
We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the Internet in this country. Thank you so much, Malcolm Turnbull.
There is much to be said for an emissions trading scheme. It was, after all, the mechanism for emission reduction ultimately chosen by the Howard government.
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.
The media – and I’m not blaming them – obviously like to seize on the differences between people and, sure, there are some senior members of the government who are in a slightly different philosophical space to mine. But do not underestimate the substantial single-mindedness of this government.
I would not want to see any relaxation of the law prohibiting human cloning.
There is one fundamental message that we want to go out from this place to every nook and cranny of our country: There should be no new tax collection without an election.
We are a very like-minded group, the senior members of this government. The outliers are not very far away from the mainstream.
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.
I’m not running for canonisation.
I try to treat people as people and not put them in pigeonholes.
Every prime minister has a whole series of networks, and there are official formal networks and there are unofficial informal networks. I’m lucky in that I have good official formal networks, starting with my own office, the leadership group, the cabinet and the party room.