"Cardinal Pell is one of the greatest churchmen that Australia has seen. I am a very imperfect Catholic. Why shouldn't I go and seek counsel? Why shouldn't I go and trespass on the time occasionally of someone like Cardinal Pell? If you spent more time with Cardinal Pell, your life might be more interesting."

"Let's be upfront about this. I know Bernie is very sick, but just because a person is sick doesn't necessarily mean that he is pure of heart in all things"

"That's bullshit. You're being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can't help yourself, can you?"

"I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change... and I think that the economics of an ETS are a bit dodgy... [but] whatever second thoughts people like me might be having, I don't think it's a good look for the Opposition to be browner than Howard going into the (2010) election."

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

"The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger."

"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."

"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 guess in the end I'm a bit like Bill Clinton on this matter, who said that he thought [abortion] should be safe, legal and rare. And I underline 'rare'."

"“I certainly have always said that the whole issue here was to try to ensure that we empowered women…[and] gave women in a very difficult position all the support they needed to make what was for them the best possible choice”."

"John Howard found a problem and created a solution. Kevin Rudd found a solution and has now created a problem"

"Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia."

"These people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers"

"All of the boats in question were in the Indonesian search and rescue zone and I want the fullest possible cooperation between Indonesia and Australia in places where Indonesia has, if you like, the legal responsibility under the law of the sea, but Australia has more practical capacity to help."

"Indonesia is a country for which I have a great deal of respect and personal affection based on my own time in Indonesia. I want nothing, but the best for Indonesia, and I certainly want, Leigh, I certainly want the boats stopped and that is overwhelmingly in the interests of both our countries."

"I'll be accountable to the Australian public at the next election - they expect us to stop the boats and that's what we are doing."

"It seems that, notwithstanding the dramatic increases in manmade CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped."

"What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up."

"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."

"We are all influenced by a value system that we hold, but in the end, every decision that a politician makes is, or at least should, in our society be based on the normal sorts of considerations. It's got to be publicly justifiable; not only justifiable in accordance with a private view; a private belief."

"I probably feel a bit threatened, as so many people do... look, it is a fact of life and I try to treat people as people, and not put them in pigeonholes."

"Well, there is no doubt that (homosexuality) challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things, but as I also said on the program, it happens, it's a fact of life and we have to treat people as we find them."

"(The pollie pedal charity fundraiser is) an opportunity to stop at lots of little towns along the way where people probably never see or don't very often see a federal member of Parliament."

"I have often said that Australia's foreign policy should have a Jakarta rather than a Geneva focus..."

"It's not goodies versus baddies, it's baddies versus baddies and that's why it's very important that we don't make a very difficult situation worse"

"WorkChoices is dead, it's buried, it's cremated."

"There may not be a great job for [aboriginal people] but whatever there is, they just have to do it... And if it's picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done."

"The love and commitment between two people of the same sex can be as strong as that between husband and wife... There is more moral quality in a relationship between two people devoted to each other for decades than in many a short-lived marriage. Still, however deeply affectionate or long lasting it may be, the relationship between two people of the same sex cannot be a marriage because a marriage, by definition, is between a man and a woman... Let's celebrate all strong relationships, whether they are between a man and a woman or between people of the same sex but let's be careful about describing every lasting sexual bond as a 'marriage'.""

"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."

"Victory is within our ready grasp...We are in reach of a famous victory"

"The poor will always be with us."

"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"

"It's pretty obvious that, well, sometimes shit happens, doesn't it?"

"My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost-of-living pressure. Stopping wasteful and unnecessary spending will keep your interest rates down."

"Well, that was one boat that did get stopped, wasn't it?"

"The Jesuits had helped to instil in me this thought that our calling in life was to be, to use the phrase: 'a man for others'."

"No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS"

"Fire is a part of the Australian experience."

"No one, however smart, however well educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom."

"As you watch her story tonight, I know you will see the friend I know - a person of strength, intellect, capacity and truly remarkable courage."

"We are Liberals who believe in smaller government, lower taxes, greater freedom."

"This government thinks that somehow you can build prosperity with new taxes. No country ever got rich by increasing taxation. No country ever built a strong economy by clobbering itself with tax after tax after tax."

"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 pledge to the families of Australia that we will never make your lives harder by imposing unnecessary new taxes."

"As many of us know, women are particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550 a year benefit for the average family."

"I normally have them cooked on the barbecue, but I enjoy onions!"

"I mean, the Nazis did terrible evil but they had a sufficient sense of shame to try to hide it"

"You know, I went to a Catholic school as a kid but no one did anything to me. Maybe I wasn't good-looking enough."

"At least so far, it’s climate change policy that’s doing harm. Climate change itself is probably doing good; or at least, more good than harm."

"Climate change is by no means the sole or even the most significant symptom of the changing interests and values of the West. Still, only societies with high levels of cultural amnesia – that have forgotten the scriptures about man created 'in the image and likeness of God' and charged with 'subduing the earth and all its creatures' – could have made such a religion out of it."