Tony Abbott

"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."

"I want to record my deep conviction that our Australian story should fill our hearts with pride and our eyes with tears. It is a story of the dispossessed and the outcast, redeemed through the innate goodness of humanity—a society challenged by nature, tested by war, enlarged by other cultures and blessed by such peace, prosperity and tolerance that we are now the envy of the earth."

"I stand for active government, not big government. I stand for government which gets off people's backs, not government which opts out of the future because it cannot face hard decisions. I stand for government which backs Australia's families with real policies and not just platitudes."

"Governments which live in fear of tomorrow's headline are incapable of any change."

"Australians rightly object to higher taxes because they observe that most government spending disappears down a bottomless well. Government often seems like an evening out—it costs a fortune and in the morning there is little to show for all the expense. But it is my hunch that people would be less hostile to paying tax if they were more confident they were investing in lasting assets..."

"Mr Speaker, standing before you in this chamber, which is heir to 700 years of parliamentary tradition, I feel like a very small boy in a very big school. To my parents and to my grandparents; to my sisters, who have made me what I am; to my wife, my mainstay; to my priceless friends; to my party, which has given me the privilege to serve, I give my heartfelt thanks. To the Jesuits who first encouraged an ideal of public service; to Bob Santamaria, who sparked my interest in politics; to several editors, who honed my way with words; to John Hewson, who introduced me to this place; and to John Howard, who has been the contemporary politician I admire most, I hope I can be true to the principles you taught. May God and the ghosts of great men give me strength. May those who have laboured greatly to build this nation fortify my resolve to make a worthy contribution in this House."

"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. Not withstanding all his or her faults, 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."

"[Abortion is] the easy way out."

"... an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience."

"I want to make it clear I do not judge or condemn any woman who has had an abortion. There would not be anyone under 50 in this country who has not come up close and personal against this issue. I accept that resolutions made in church often wilt under the hot breath of passion - I think I know that as well as any person in this chamber - but every abortion is a tragedy and up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation's legacy of unutterable shame."

"I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [for cervical cancer], maybe that's because I'm a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won't be"

"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."