We are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially with a hotter and drier climate in southern Australia - the rush to construct desalination plants is an expensive testament to that.

I'm sick of the cover-ups, I'm sick of the lies, and so are the bloody veterans, that come out daily of the department's mouth.

Are not the gays who seek the right to marry, to formalise their commitment to each other, holding up a mirror to heterosexuals who are marrying less frequently and divorcing more often?

I am an ambitious person, but I am not ambitious in the sense that I want jobs only for the sake of them... I am here to do things I think are worthwhile. I am always careful that the political positions I take are consistent with good policy. I would not want to be prime minister of Australia at any price.

Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment - whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.

Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted.

In terms of our region, what we need to ensure is that the rise of China [is] conducted in a manner that does not disturb the security and the relative harmony of the region upon which China's prosperity depends. Now - now, that requires careful diplomacy, it requires balancing.