We learn from every natural disaster. Whether it's a fire or a flood, we learn something from it so we can respond to the next one better.

What you've got to do is recognize that you don't control everything for a start, you've got to play the cards you're dealt, the hand of cards you're dealt, as best you can, and that's what I always seek to do.

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

If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.

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.

Government will not nominate the former Labor prime minister [Kevin Rudd] to be the UN's next secretary-general.

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.