When the world is in trouble, Australia responds. Australia is a good, global citizen.

Do we really want to invest $50 billion of hard earned taxpayers money in what is essentially a video entertainment system?

We will be a consultative, collegial government. No surprises, no excuses. That's what you'll get under the Coalition.

I think my wife and my kids are incredibly good to allow me to stay in public life given that they have to cop a whole lot of collateral attention that, being human, they'd rather not get.

It's very easy for Australians living in big cities to either romanticise or demonise the situation in Aboriginal places - to kind of look at things through the 'noble innocents' prism or through the 'chronically dysfunctional' prism, and I suspect that is so often the case.

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.

I think that people should come to Australia through the front door, not through the back door. If people want a migration outcome, they should go through the migration channels.