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.

At the end of the day government is about teamwork and partnership and we will be proving that by working together.

Any sort of political correctness needs to be swept out of the way

All my life I've believed that men and women have equal capacities and talents...consequently there should be equality in life's chances.

We encourage China to engage as a good global citizen and we are clear-eyed about where differences do lie.

Afghanistan must never again be a safe haven for terrorism.

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.