Tony Abbott Quotations

I'm a politician. I'm not going to get into a whole range of scientific argument with scientists

A tax cut to compensate for a tax increase is not a cut - it's a con.

Once people come to Australia, they join the team.

I do enjoy exercise, not because I am an exercise junkie but because it's terrific stress release.

I would not want to see any relaxation of the law prohibiting human cloning

I instinctively try to protect people from filth.

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

We just can’t stop people from being homeless if that’s their choice.

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

For small business people, less paperwork means higher profits, boosted sales and more time with the family.

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.

If people are going to do things which have certain consequences that they would rather avoid, they should do whatever they need to avoid the consequences

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

Well, I'm not saying that an emissions tax is ever going to be good policy.

Political parties don't work when people just announce what they are doing and expect everyone else to follow.

If we boost productivity, we can improve economic growth.

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

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 mean there are many, many people in all sorts of different countries who don't have a great life, who are subject to injustice. Are we obliged to take all of them who come here? I think the answer is 'Not necessarily.'

Certainly, my uni days involved some statements that I wouldn't make today

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.

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

There are no factions in the Liberal Party

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

I try to treat people as people and not put them in pigeonholes

My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost of living pressure

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.

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.

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

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

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

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 that political marriages are subject to more strain than most precisely because of the nature of politics.

I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to be asked.

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

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

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.

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

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.

You try turning up in America without documents, without a visa, without a passport; you'll be treated as very, very much illegal.

You cannot win an election without a fight

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

My mum and mad were both very generous, encouraging parents.

I want to see an end to sovereign risk questions over Australia.

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 am in favour of the notion of Australia as an immigrant society

The truth is I try to take people as I find them.

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.

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

We have a lot of experienced players back, ... Our attitude is that we want to go out and prove last year was a fluke. We are out to prove we are a lot better than 1-9.

The best way of ensuring that you don't get infected with something like this, in the absence of an effective vaccine, would be isolation,

If there is a pandemic, international travel will almost cease I suspect for a significant period of time,

We accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.

Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.

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.

The last thing Australia needs right now is instability and uncertainty.

No one, however smart, however well-educated, however experienced, is the suppository of all wisdom.

I've always been very wary of debates involving women.

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.

I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman’s right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man’s right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak

I think it's time for the Prime Minister to stop making excuses and to start governing.

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.

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.

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

Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage

What we are determined to do is to take more people from Syria and that war-torn part of the world as a response to this particular crisis, but again I stress we are taking people from camps because the last thing we want to do is to encourage and reward people smuggling.We are taking people from camps and we are taking family groups; our focus will be on family groups, from persecuted minorities.

If we're honest, most of us would accept that a bad boss is a little bit like a bad father or a bad husband ... you find that he tends to do more good than harm. He might be a bad boss but at least he's employing someone while he is in fact a boss.

There may not be a great job for [Aboriginal people] but whatever there is, they just have to do it, and if it’s picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax.

I don't think it's a very Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door,

I also think that if you want to put a price on carbon, why not just do it with a simple tax? Why not ask motorists to pay more, why not ask electricity consumers to pay more and then at the end of the year you can take your invoices to the tax office and get a rebate of the carbon tax you've paid

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.

We shouldn't be willy-nilly creating potential human life just to satisfy the urges of the scientific community.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

The only thing I wouldn't do is sell my arse.

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.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.

Even potential human life needs to be treated with great respect.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

There is much to be said for an emissions trading scheme. It was, after all, the mechanism for emission reduction ultimately chosen by the Howard government.

Middle income families with children are Australia’s new poor

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.

When politicians complain about the media, it strikes me as resembling footballers complaining about the umpire.

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.