Tony Abbott Quotes

Middle income families with children are Australia’s new poor

I do not regard myself as a Christian politician. I regard myself as a politician who just happens to think religion matters. I would be appalled, absolutely appalled, to think religion drove anyone's politics in a secular democracy like ours.

The problem with politicians getting to know the issues in indigenous townships is that we tend to suffer from what Aboriginal people call the 'seagull syndrome' - we fly in, scratch around and fly out.

The thing about social media is that it is anonymous, so it can be much more vitriolic and extreme than normal media and yet it is there for everyone to see. It is kind of like electronic graffiti. The political process is accelerated and intense in a way that I don't believe it ever really has been before.

Like the Governor-General, when asked what you enjoy most about the job my tendency is to say "today", because of the insights you get into our nation and because of the privileged contact you have with so many people.

Oppositions are not there to get legislation through. Oppositions are there to hold the government to account.

I think anything which improves services is in principle a good thing.

The Liberal Party has dealt with the spill motion and now this matter is behind us, we think that when you elect a government, when you elect a prime minister, you deserve to keep that government and that prime minister until you have a chance to change your mind.

Taxes will always be lower under a Coalition government

I just think that this whole issue of creating potential human life, not to give life, but to give the scientists a bit more of a leg-up, is fraught with danger.

And a government that accepts that it will be judged more by its deeds than by its mere words.

A government that understands the limits of power as well as its potential.

Tony Abbott's books are so amazing!

I understand that government should live within its means, value the money it holds in trust from you the taxpayer, avoid waste and, above all else, observe the first maxim of good government: namely, do no avoidable harm.

The only party which is going to increase taxes after the election is the Labor Party.

I don't think my religious convictions should be held against me.

What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.

There will be no overall increase in the tax burden whatsoever.

Australia will take more refugees from Syria in response to the growing international crisis but it will not increase the total number of asylum seekers it accepts.

Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world.

There are no factions in the Liberal Party

The fact is that I'm interested in getting on with my job of holding the Government to account and I think that the Government should get on with the job of effectively running the country and not making excuses for poor performance, not lowering expectations. Their job is to deliver on their election commitments.

I don't think that my particular religious convictions should be held against me in this campaign any more than the Prime Minister's lack of convictions should be held against her.

I was pointing out the depth of the friendship between Australia and Indonesia and the fact that Australia has been there for Indonesia when Indonesia has been in difficulty.

The role of CO2 is not nearly as clear as the climate catastrophists would suggest.

No country or continent can open its borders to all comers without fundamentally weakening itself and this is the risk that the countries of Europe run through misguided altruism.

Should we choose to extend our airstrikes into Syria, we will be doing this in the collective self-defence of Iraq. We would be doing this out of a responsibility to protect innocent people at risk of horrible death from the most violent people imaginable.

The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.

I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons.

I'm confident that there are plenty of people who have the strength of character and the presence of mind to warn me of difficulties and alert me to opportunities.

There's a sense in which politicians can never work hard enough.

The quality of government, I suppose, is determined not by what happens, but by how you react to what happens.

Abortion is the easy way out. It’s hardly surprising that people should choose the most convenient exit from awkward situations.

Labor has come out with a series of proposals to increase taxes, including taxes on people across Australia saving for their retirement, he has actually identified so far zero dollars in spending reductions.

In Australia’s biggest cities, public transport is generally slow, expensive, not especially reliable and still hideous drain on the public purse. Part of the problem is inefficient, overmanned, union-dominated government run train and bus systems. Mostly though, …there just aren’t enough people wanting to go from a particular place to a particular destination at a particular time to justify any vehicle larger than a car, and cars need roads.

I am not being negative, I am simply being factual when I say Kevin Rudd is the best friend the people smugglers have ever had

I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.

Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I'm proud of that...

We cannot suffer a person by his affidavit to arraign the whole justice of the country and its administration.

The Australian people expect the Government to govern, they don't expect it to make excuses.

The Australian public are very fair and they are always prepared to give the leader of a major political party a fair go.

I think we've produced a stronger prohibition on real racism, while maintaining freedom of speech in ordinary public discussion. So I'm very comfortable with where we're at. We're not dogmatic or impervious to a further argument, that's why we released it as an exposure draft rather than simply releasing it straight into the parliament.

Why isn’t the fact that 100,000 women choose to end their pregnancies regarded as a national tragedy approaching the scale, say, of Aboriginal life expectancy being 20 years less than that of the general community?

If you don't want to work weekends, don't.

There's always a lot happening. I mean, that's the thing about politics: it's just one damn thing after another!

If I was in a refugee camp somewhere on the Pakistani border, of course I'd want to come to Australia.

We are about getting things done. We are not about the blame game. We are not about making excuses.

I instinctively try to protect people from filth.