I do not believe we can effectively move Australia to a lower emission economy, which is what we need to do if we're going to make a contribution to a global reduction in greenhouse gases, without putting a price on carbon.

If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.

Americans understand that they have no stronger ally, no better friend, than Australia.

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.

I think Australians are more interested in what I am doing with their money than what I am doing with my own.

There is a tendency to try to dumb everything down and turn everything into a one-paragraph press release or even less, just a slogan.