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?

Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat have passed through several countries on the way, and if they simply wanted asylum they could have claimed that in any of the countries through which they'd passed.

I think leadership is knowing what you want to achieve and then purposefully and sensibly taking steps to achieve it, remembering always that you have got to bring people with you if you are seeking to be a successful political leader.

I have close family members as well as lots of close friends who are gay. Many of them strongly support gay marriage.

I think that marriage is, dare I say it, between a man and a woman, hopefully for life and there are all sorts of other relationships which should be acknowledged and recognised, but I don't know that they can be recognised as marriage.

Our police, our hard-working police, that our extraordinarily committed and dedicated military personnel, I'm really pleased that they are getting a good paid parental leave scheme.

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.