I think when people talk about civil liberties, they sometimes forget that action taken to protect the citizen against physical violence and physical attack is a blow in favour and not a blow against civil liberties.

I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else'.

You are not prime minister of Australia because of some kind of process of divine selection. You are prime minister of Australia through the gift of the Australian people.

We won't just automatically click our heels and follow the Americans.

I accept that in a free society you have to justify reductions in people's liberties. I accept that, bearing in mind my starting point is that the most important human right is the right to life.

It's too much to expect in an academic setting that we should all agree, but it is not too much to expect discipline and unvarying civility.

Nobody should claim that the war [in Iraq] is over. But certainly it can be said that the regime is finished.