There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead.

Over the Christmas period, I spent time with both Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and you listen to stories and tales of how hard it can be when it's really hard, and I think we easily all talk ourselves into the proposition that it's never been as hard as this. Well it's been hard in the past. It's been really hard. So you keep doing it and, the more you do it, the more you gain strength and confidence that you can do it.

If we change the way the electricity sector operates, we can bring down our levels of carbon pollution, and continue the crucial task of tackling climate change. Putting a price on carbon would do this.

Try harder every day to be better than the day before.

As our economy faces up to potential labour shortages due to our ageing population and as it moves to a new level of sophistication to compete with the rest of the world, we're going to need every Australian on board pulling their weight, rejoining the workforce, gaining new skills. Writing off individuals and communities suffering from poverty just creates a dead weight for our economy to drag along.

I know people are looking at whats happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.

Those of you who have spent time with Australians know that we are not given to overstatement. By nature we are laconic speakers and by conviction we are realistic thinkers.