I have absolutely no difficulty myself with the playing of God Save the Queen in the presence of Her Majesty.

For so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man's good intentions toward his fellow man.

If I were running al-Qaeda in Iraq, I would put a circle around March 2008 and be praying as many times as possible for a victory not only for Obama but also for the Democrats.

There is a very special place in the Australian psyche for sport. It is one of the pillars of the Australian way of life. You don't really understand what makes the Australian nation tick unless you understand the great affection Australians have for sport.

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

There is much in American society which I admire, but I have long held the view that the absence of an effective safety net in that country means that too many needy citizens fall by the wayside. That is not the path that Australia will tread. Nor do we want the burdens of nanny state paternalism that now weigh down many economies in Europe.

I'm not running away from the fact that I had previously said I did not contemplate a major increase, and that was a fair statement of the Government's state of mind at the time I made that.