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There Are Some Issues Where Ministers Should Come And Talk To The Prime Minister, If The Prime Minister Hasn't Already Talked To Them. Any Issue Which A Minister Thinks Is Going To Be Profoundly Controversial, Where We Do Not Have A Clear Existing Position, It Is Important That There Be A Conversation Between The Minister And The Prime Minister. I Think They All Understand That And I Think It Is Working Very Well.

-Tony Abbott

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There Are Some Issues

Tony Abbott

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There Are Some Issues Where Ministers Should Come And Talk To The Prime Minister, If The Prime Minister Hasn't Already Talked To Them. Any Issue Which A Minister Thinks Is Going To Be Profoundly Controversial, Where We Do Not Have A Clear Existing Position, It Is Important That There Be A Conversation Between The Minister And The Prime Minister. I Think They All Understand That And I Think It Is Working Very Well.

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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.

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When Politicians Complain About The Media, It Strikes Me As Resembling Footballers Complaining About The Umpire.

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.

And A Government That Accepts That It Will Be Judged More By Its Deeds Than By Its Mere Words.

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.

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.

Presence Of Mind

We Have Already Provided A Strong Humanitarian Response To The Problems In The Middle East And That Response Will Be Stronger Within Coming Days.

What I Would Like To See Is Sufficiently Good Education And Health Services Being Delivered To Aboriginal People So That They Are Prepared And Ready To Leave And Join The Economic Mainstream If That's Their Choice.

No Cuts To Health , No Cuts To Education, No Cuts To Pensions.

There Is One Fundamental Message That We Want To Go Out From This Place To Every Nook And Cranny Of Our Country: There Should Be No New Tax Collection Without An Election.

We Accept That Sometimes In Difficult Circumstances, Difficult Things Happen.

The Climate Change Argument Is Absolute Crap

There Will Be No Overall Increase In The Tax Burden Whatsoever.

It Is Fit That Justice Should Be Administered With Great Caution.

The Choice Made By Families Not To Immunize Their Children Is Not Supported By Public Policy Or Medical Research Nor Should Such Action Be Supported By Taxpayers In The Form Of Child Care Payments.

We Will Be A Consultative, Collegial Government. No Surprises, No Excuses. That's What You'll Get Under The Coalition.

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 Have Close Family Members As Well As Lots Of Close Friends Who Are Gay. Many Of Them Strongly Support Gay Marriage.

A Presumption Of Any Fact Is, Properly, An Inferring Of That Fact From Other Facts That Are Known; It Is An Act Of Reasoning; And Much Of Human Knowledge On All Subjects Is Derived From This Source.

There'll Be Some Savings From Preventing Double Dipping By Public Servants Which Are Currently Able To Access Not One But Two Fully Tax Payer Funded Schemes And Of Course There Will Be Out Paid Parental Leave Levy. So All Up Not Only Is This An Important Economic Reform, An Important Reform To Have To Grow Our Economy More Strongly, It Also Will Leave The Budget Better Off Which Will Help Us Fix The Mess That Labor Has Created With The Budget.

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.

You Try Turning Up In America Without Documents, Without A Visa, Without A Passport; You'll Be Treated As Very, Very Much Illegal.

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.

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.

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.

I'm A Politician. I'm Not Going To Get Into A Whole Range Of Scientific Argument With Scientists.

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.

Australia Would Play Its Role In Taking Displaced People From The Syrian Conflict.

I Want To Make It Clear That I Do Not Judge Or Condemn Any Woman Who Has Had An Abortion, But Every Abortion Is A Tragedy And Up To 100,000 Abortions A Year Is This Generation's Legacy Of Unutterable Shame.

I Am A Model Of Positivity Compared To The Kinds Of Vitriol, The Kinds Of Destructive Criticisms That Labor Members Of Parliament Have Been Making Of Each Other.

The Australian Public Are Very Fair And They Are Always Prepared To Give The Leader Of A Major Political Party A Fair Go.

We Are Looking At What More We Can Do. As Well As A Strong Security Response We Need A Strong Humanitarian One.

More Excuses For More Failures.

Abortion Is The Easy Way Out. It’s Hardly Surprising That People Should Choose The Most Convenient Exit From Awkward Situations.

I'm Focused On Doing The Job The Treasurer Should Do.i Don't Respond To Gossip.

This Is A Government Which Is Proposing To Put At Risk Our Manufacturing Industry, To Penalise Struggling Families, To Make A Tough Situation Worse For Millions Of Households Right Around Australia. And For What? To Make Not A Scrap Of Difference To The Environment Any Time In The Next 1000 Years.

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.

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Middle Income Families With Children Are Australia’s New Poor

I'm Not Really Managing The Work-life Balance, I'm Just Accepting That The Work Increases And The Ordinary Life Has To Decrease When You're The Prime Minister.

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If I Was In A Refugee Camp Somewhere On The Pakistani Border, Of Course I'd Want To Come To Australia.

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People Who Have Put Money Aside On The Basis Of A Certain Set Of Rules Shouldn't Have That Money Raided Just Because Government Has Got A Problem.

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The Role Of Co2 Is Not Nearly As Clear As The Climate Catastrophists Would Suggest.

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I Don't Bring Religion Into The Square.

If You Want To Put A Price On Carbon Why Not Just Do It With A Simple Tax?

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Here We Go Again, A Government Which Is Making Yet More Excuses For Yet More Failure When It Comes To Getting Our Budgetary Situation Right.

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If We Boost Productivity, We Can Improve Economic Growth.

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Whether Carbon Dioxide Is Quite The Environmental Villain That Some People Make It Out To Be Is Not Yet Proven.

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.

It Was A Positive Sign That The Conversation Took Place, It's A Sign Of The Depth Of The Friendship Between Australia And Indonesia.

I Want To Be A Very Good Friend To Indonesia, But There Are Some Things Which Are Non-negotiable. Border Protection Is Just Non-negotiable. Maintaining A Strong Security Network Is Just Non-negotiable. I Think The Indonesians Understand That.

The One Thing That Has Changed Dramatically When You Talk To The People Of New Zealand And People From Ireland? They Feel A Darned-sight Better About Themselves Because They Made The Decision To Do What They've Done, And I Can Say To You, We Would Feel A Bloody Darned Sight Better About Ourselves Once We Get An Opportunity To Put This [vote On Same-sex Marriage] Out There.

Part Of My Role, I Suppose, Is To Run Government Business In The House Of Representatives, And Try To Ensure That People Know Exactly What's Going On In The Chamber Is An Important Part Of That.

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To Move Past Fear Is A Cliche.

Jesus Knew That There Was A Place For Everything And It’s Not Necessarily Everyone’s Place To Come To Australia.

The Smart Way To Improve Broadband Is Not To Junk The Existing Network But To Make The Most Of It. It’s To Let A Competitive Market Deliver The Speeds That People Need At An Affordable Price With Government Improving Infrastructure In The Areas Where Market Competition Won’t Deliver It.

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 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.

You Cannot Win An Election Without A Fight

All Of The People Who Are Using Their Blackberries Or Their Iphones, Facebook, All Of The People Who Are Sitting In Cafes And Hotels Rooms Doing Their Work, They're All Using Wireless Technology, And We Shouldn't Assume That The Only Way Of The Future Is High Speed Cable.

Another Big Problem With Any Australian Emissions Reduction Scheme Is That It Would Not Make A Material Difference To Atmospheric Carbon Concentrations Unless The Big International Polluters Had Similar Schemes.

I Am In Favour Of The Notion Of Australia As An Immigrant Society

So, My Friends, In A Week Or So The Governor-general Will Swear In A New Government.

We Are About Getting Things Done. We Are Not About The Blame Game. We Are Not About Making Excuses.

We Are Going To Be A Government Of No Surprises And No Excuses; A Government Which Keeps Its Commitments And A Government Which Is Straight And Candid With The Australian People And That's What We Intend To Do.

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?

We've Got To Maintain Freedom Of Navigation Of The Seas And In The Air.

I See Myself As A Social Conservative, But I Think That There Are Lots Of Social Institutions That Produce Beneficial Reforms, Like Public Hospitals, For Instance, And Schools.

Oppositions Are Not There To Get Legislation Through. Oppositions Are There To Hold The Government To Account.

Every Prime Minister Has A Whole Series Of Networks, And There Are Official Formal Networks And There Are Unofficial Informal Networks. I'm Lucky In That I Have Good Official Formal Networks, Starting With My Own Office, The Leadership Group, The Cabinet And The Party Room.

Well, I'm Not Saying That An Emissions Tax Is Ever Going To Be Good Policy.

It Is A Very Heavy Responsibility [to Be A Prime-minister] To Make, But Someone Has To Make It For Our Country And I Am Thrilled And Honoured To Have That Opportunity And That Responsibility.

A Government That Says What It Means, And Means What It Says.

Now, I Know That There Are Some Aboriginal People Who Aren’t Happy With Australia Day. For Them It Remains Invasion Day. I Think A Better View Is The View Of Noel Pearson, Who Has Said That Aboriginal People Have Much To Celebrate In This Country’s British Heritage.

I'm Still Getting My Exercise At Five O'clock In The Morning, That's Good. So Far I've Managed To Hold On To A Bike Ride On Saturday Or Sunday Morning, Probably At Least Two Weekends Out Of Three.

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.

Aboriginal People Have Much To Celebrate In This Country's British Heritage

My Commitment To The Forgotten Families Of Australia Is To Ease Your Cost Of Living Pressure

What Will Most Certainly Happen Is That There Will Be Very Clear And Full Communication Between The Government And Independents And Minor Parties. The Precise Mechanisms Will Evolve Over Time, But We Certainly Intend To Keep The Minor Parties And The Independents Very Much In The Loop. We Have To If We Want Our Legislative Agenda To Have A Reasonable Chance Of Success And That's What We Intend To Do.

In The Era Of Mobile Phones And Emails, You're No More Out Of The Loop In China Than You Are In Sydney.

A Midnight Knock On The Door Followed By Execution Is No Way A Leader Should Be Treated.

I Feel A Little Uncomfortable At Being Asked The Sorts Of Questions That Other Catholics In Public Life Tend Not To Be Asked.

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.

Now If You Are Condemned To Life On Welfare, I'm Not So Sure That Being In A Bigger Welfare Village Is That Much Better Than Being In A Smaller Welfare Village.

Look, Good Government Doesn't Look For Excuses, Good Government Gets On With The Job.

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.

Well, Michael, We Will Be Telling The People Of Australia In Good Time Before The Next Election Exactly What They Can Expect From Us. No Surprises, No Excuses. They Will Be Our Watch Words Going Into The Election And Afterwards, Should We Form A Government.

Even Potential Human Life Needs To Be Treated With Great Respect.

We Are A Very Like-minded Group, The Senior Members Of This Government. The Outliers Are Not Very Far Away From The Mainstream.

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.

While I Think Men And Women Are Equal, They Are Also Different And I Think It's Inevitable And I Don't Think It's A Bad Thing At All That We Always Have, Say, More Women Doing Things Like Physiotherapy And An Enormous Number Of Women Simply Doing Housework.

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'm Not Saying That People On Welfare Don't Contribute In Their Own Way, But As Many As Possible Should Be Encouraged To Be Economically Active As Well As Socially And Culturally Active.

I Instinctively Try To Protect People From Filth.

Tony Abbott's Books Are So Amazing!

I Think There Is No Doubt That The Advent Of 24/7 News Channels, Which Are Voracious In Their Demand For Constant New Content, Has Accelerated The Political Process. The Rise Of Social Media, In Addition To Talkback, I Think Has Intensified The Political Process.

I Am Extremely Unwilling That We Should Take Upon Ourselves To Exercise A Jurisdiction Which The Law Does Not Vest In Us.

Prima Facie, Every Estate, Whether Given By Will Or Otherwise, Is Supposed To Be Beneficial To The Party To Whom It Is So Given.

The Argument [behind Climate Change] Is Absolute Crap. However, The Politics Of This Are Tough For Us. Eighty Per Cent Of People Believe Climate Change Is A Real And Present Danger.

The The Relationship Between The Prime Minister And The Monarch Is Very Much A Personal One And When It Comes To The Constitution Of The Order Of Australia, Which Is Headed By The Monarch, This Is Governed By Letters Patent, Which Are A Matter Between The Prime Minister And The Monarch.

Certainly, My Uni Days Involved Some Statements That I Wouldn't Make Today.

I Do Enjoy Exercise, Not Because I Am An Exercise Junkie But Because It's Terrific Stress Release.

We've Got To Get The System Right. That's Why We've Got This Root-and-branch Reform Under Way.

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.

We Can't Conclusively Say Whether Man-made Carbon Dioxide Emissions Are Contributing To Climate Change.

I Want To See An End To Sovereign Risk Questions Over Australia.

The Sky Is Where Mathematics And Magic Become One.

The Australian People Expect The Government To Govern, They Don't Expect It To Make Excuses.

We Are Naturally Reluctant As A Peace-loving People To Reach Out To Far-away Conflicts But, As We Know, This Conflict Has Been Reaching Out To Us For Months Now.

Western Civilisation Came To This Country In 1788 And I'm Proud Of That...

The Quality Of Government, I Suppose, Is Determined Not By What Happens, But By How You React To What Happens.

Climate Change Is Crap.

I've Always Avoided Those Sorts Of Self-assessments Because If You Give Yourself A 10 Out Of 10 People Think You're A Big Head, If You Give Yourself A 6 Out Of 10 They Think You're Plagued With Self-doubt, So I'm Just Not Going To Rate Myself.

The Only Thing I Wouldn't Do Is Sell My Arse.

Mates Help Each Other; They Do Not Tax Each Other.

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.

The Last Thing Australia Needs Right Now Is Instability And Uncertainty.

Do We Really Want To Invest $50 Billion Of Hard Earned Taxpayers Money In What Is Essentially A Video Entertainment System?

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.

Faith Is Important To Me. It's Important To Millions Of Australians. It Helps To Shape Who I Am. It Helps To Shape My Values. But It Must Never, Never Dictate My Politics.

I Think All Senior Politicians Tend To Be Rather More Subtle Then The Commentators Would Have It. It Is A Natural Tendency For Human Beings To Try To Classify. We All Have This Classification Urge - So And So Is Such And Such, That Person Is In That Camp - But Look, Most Sophisticated People Defy Stereotype.

It Seems That, Notwithstanding The Dramatic Increases In Manmade Co2 Emissions Over The Last Decade, The World's Warming Has Stopped.

A Government That Understands The Limits Of Power As Well As Its Potential.

There's A Sense In Which Politicians Can Never Work Hard Enough.

We Will Act To Build A Better World. We Always Have, We Always Will. We Will Act To Lend A Helping Hand, Not Just Here But Wherever We Humanly Can.

My Mum And Mad Were Both Very Generous, Encouraging Parents.

I've Always Been Very Wary Of Debates Involving Women.

I'm Not Running For Canonisation.

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.

Voluntary Paid Maternity Leave: Yes; Compulsory Paid Maternity Leave: Over This Government’s Dead Body, Frankly. It Just Won’t Happen.

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.

We Just Can’t Stop People From Being Homeless If That’s Their Choice.

We Are Sticking With The Plan. We Have A Plan To Get Taxes Down, To Get Regulation Down, To Get Productivity Up, To Create Jobs, To Reduce Taxes, To Boost Prosperity. The Plan Is Working And We Are Sticking With It.

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.

I Think Anything Which Improves Services Is In Principle A Good Thing.

They've Changed The Salesman But They Haven't Changed The Product.

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.

No One, However Smart, However Well-educated, However Experienced, Is The Suppository Of All Wisdom.

To Be Sociable, I Puffed On A Marijuana Cigarette, But I Didn't Inhale...i Just Hate The Idea Of Drawing Smoke Into My Lungs.

A Tax Cut To Compensate For A Tax Increase Is Not A Cut - It's A Con.

Both Mum And Dad Were Converts To Catholicism, And Normally If You Convert To Catholicism You Have Thought About It More Than Someone Who Just Grew Up With It, Taking It For Granted.

When You Are Challenging The Young, They Can Come Back At You With Language Of Tremendous Power And They Are No Respecters Of Sacred Cows, You Know, The Young. There's Nothing Politically Correct About The Average Young Australian When It Comes To Use Of Language.

The Only Party Which Is Going To Increase Taxes After The Election Is The Labor Party.

The Measure In The Budget In Relation To Parental Leave Pay Is Based On A Simple Proposition. Most Women Across Australia Have Access To One Scheme Funded By The Taxpayer. Some Women Have Access To Two Schemes And That's Great.

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