The only party which is going to increase taxes after the election is the Labor Party.
Mates help each other; they do not tax each other.
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.
Certainly, my uni days involved some statements that I wouldn’t make today.
There are tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of people living in poverty and danger who might readily seek to enter a Western country if the opportunity is there.
I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to be asked.
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 know that they can be recognised as marriage.
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.
In the era of mobile phones and emails, you’re no more out of the loop in China than you are in Sydney.
I do enjoy exercise, not because I am an exercise junkie but because it’s terrific stress release.
When you are challenging the young, they can come back at you with language of tremendous power and they are no respecters of sacred cows, you know, the young. There’s nothing politically correct about the average young Australian when it comes to use of language.
There’s a sense in which politicians can never work hard enough.
It seems that, notwithstanding the dramatic increases in manmade CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped.
A government that understands the limits of power as well as its potential.
And a government that accepts that it will be judged more by its deeds than by its mere words.
We are going to be a government of no surprises and no excuses; a government which keeps its commitments and a government which is straight and candid with the Australian people and that’s what we intend to do.
Political parties don’t work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.
Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.
No cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to pensions.
We will act to build a better world. We always have, we always will. We will act to lend a helping hand, not just here but wherever we humanly can.