Tony Abbott quotes:

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

We are about getting things done. We are not about the blame game. We are not about making excuses.

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 to be a successful political leader.

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.

Australia will take more refugees from Syria in response to the growing international crisis but it will not increase the total number of asylum seekers it accepts.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more, why not ask electricity consumers to pay more and then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you've paid

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.

If we're honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband ... you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he's employing someone while he is in fact a boss.

We can't conclusively say whether man-made carbon dioxide emissions are contributing to climate change.

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 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 anything which improves services is in principle a good thing.

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

We accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.

I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... it [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.

When the world is in trouble, Australia responds. Australia is a good, global citizen.

Here we go again, a government which is making yet more excuses for yet more failure when it comes to getting our budgetary situation right.

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

The last thing Australia needs right now is instability and uncertainty.

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 to be a successful political leader

The choice made by families not to immunize their children is not supported by public policy or medical research nor should such action be supported by taxpayers in the form of child care payments.

I am a model of positivity compared to the kinds of vitriol, the kinds of destructive criticisms that Labor members of parliament have been making of each other.

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

We are a very like-minded group, the senior members of this government. The outliers are not very far away from the mainstream.

I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons

While I think men and women are equal, they are also different and I think it's inevitable and I don't think it's a bad thing at all that we always have, say, more women doing things like physiotherapy and an enormous number of women simply doing housework.

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

We've got to get the system right. That's why we've got this root-and-branch reform under way.

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

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

The sky is where mathematics and magic become one.

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.

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 am not being negative, I am simply being factual when I say Kevin Rudd is the best friend the people smugglers have ever had

I think it's time for the Prime Minister to stop making excuses and to start governing.

I want to make it clear that I do not judge or condemn any woman who has had an abortion, but every abortion is a tragedy and up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation's legacy of unutterable shame.

This is a government which is proposing to put at risk our manufacturing industry, to penalise struggling families, to make a tough situation worse for millions of households right around Australia. And for what? To make not a scrap of difference to the environment any time in the next 1000 years.

I'm focused on doing the job the treasurer should do.I don't respond to gossip.

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

I'm a politician. I'm not going to get into a whole range of scientific argument with scientists.

If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax.

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.

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

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.

Once people come to Australia, they join the team.

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.

If we boost productivity, we can improve economic growth.

I instinctively try to protect people from filth.

There are no factions in the Liberal Party.

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.

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

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.'

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

My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost of living pressure.

My mum and mad were both very generous, encouraging parents.

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

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.

A bit of body contact never hurt anyone.

A government that says what it means, and means what it says.

A government that understands the limits of power as well as its potential.

A midnight knock on the door followed by execution is no way a leader should be treated.

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.

Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage

Abortion is the easy way out. It's hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.

Although our powers are great, they are not unlimited they are bounded by some lines of demarcation.

And a government that accepts that it will be judged more by its deeds than by its mere words.

And the commitment that I've been giving to the Australian people is that there'll be no surprises and no excuses under a Coalition government.

Another big problem with any Australian emissions reduction scheme is that it would not make a material difference to atmospheric carbon concentrations unless the big international polluters had similar schemes.

Australia would play its role in taking displaced people from the Syrian conflict.

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

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

Climate change is crap.

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.

Do we really want to invest $50 billion of hard earned taxpayers money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?

Even potential human life needs to be treated with great respect.

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.

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

Human society was so constituted, for human nature was so constituted, that the honour and dignity of a father were connected with that of a son; and there was no son who must not be disturbed and disquieted by imputations on his father.

I am extremely unwilling that we should take upon ourselves to exercise a jurisdiction which the law does not vest in us.

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

I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.

I can't promise that I won't continue to embarrass people.

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 don't bring religion into the square.

I don't think it's a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door,

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

I don't think that my particular religious convictions should be held against me in this campaign any more than the Prime Minister's lack of convictions should be held against her.

I just think that this whole issue of creating potential human life, not to give life, but to give the scientists a bit more of a leg-up, is fraught with danger.

I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.

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 think all senior politicians tend to be rather more subtle then the commentators would have it. It is a natural tendency for human beings to try to classify. We all have this classification urge - so and so is such and such, that person is in that camp - but look, most sophisticated people defy stereotype.

I think that it's high time that the Prime Minister stopped making excuses for bad policy and started listening to the forgotten families of Australia.

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

I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman's right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man's right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak

I think there is no doubt that the advent of 24/7 news channels, which are voracious in their demand for constant new content, has accelerated the political process. The rise of social media, in addition to talkback, I think has intensified the political process.

I think we've produced a stronger prohibition on real racism, while maintaining freedom of speech in ordinary public discussion. So I'm very comfortable with where we're at. We're not dogmatic or impervious to a further argument, that's why we released it as an exposure draft rather than simply releasing it straight into the parliament.

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

I want to be a very good friend to Indonesia, but there are some things which are non-negotiable. Border protection is just non-negotiable. Maintaining a strong security network is just non-negotiable. I think the Indonesians understand that.

I want to run a government, Barnaby wants to be part of a government, which is characterized by the motto if you like, no surprises, no excuses. That will be the motto of an incoming Coalition government. No surprises, no excuses.

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

I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that's the big difference.

I was pointing out the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia and the fact that Australia has been there for Indonesia when Indonesia has been in difficulty.

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

If you don't want to work weekends, don't.