I think that it's high time that the Prime Minister stopped making excuses for bad policy and started listening to the forgotten families of Australia.

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.

There are tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of people living in poverty and danger who might readily seek to enter a Western country if the opportunity is there.

I think that the best things that governments can do for productivity is not whack on new taxes and, if we can get institutions like schools and hospitals functioning better, well that's obviously good for the overall productiveness of our society.

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

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.

We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the Internet in this country.