Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

I want to record my deep conviction that our Australian story should fill our hearts with pride and our eyes with tears. It is a story of the dispossessed and the outcast, redeemed through the innate goodness of humanity—a society challenged by nature, tested by war, enlarged by other cultures and blessed by such peace, prosperity and tolerance that we are now the envy of the earth.

— Tony Abbott

I stand for active government, not big government. I stand for government which gets off people's backs, not government which opts out of the future because it cannot face hard decisions. I stand for government which backs Australia's families with real policies and not just platitudes.

— Tony Abbott

Governments which live in fear of tomorrow's headline are incapable of any change.

— Tony Abbott

Australians rightly object to higher taxes because they observe that most government spending disappears down a bottomless well. Government often seems like an evening out—it costs a fortune and in the morning there is little to show for all the expense. But it is my hunch that people would be less hostile to paying tax if they were more confident they were investing in lasting assets...

— Tony Abbott

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. Not withstanding all his or her faults, 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.

— Tony Abbott

[Abortion is] the easy way out.

— Tony Abbott

... an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience.

— Tony Abbott

I want to make it clear I do not judge or condemn any woman who has had an abortion. There would not be anyone under 50 in this country who has not come up close and personal against this issue. I accept that resolutions made in church often wilt under the hot breath of passion - I think I know that as well as any person in this chamber - but every abortion is a tragedy and up to 100,000 abortions a year is this generation's legacy of unutterable shame.

— Tony Abbott

I won't be rushing out to get my daughters vaccinated [for cervical cancer], maybe that's because I'm a cruel, callow, callous, heartless bastard but, look, I won't be

— Tony Abbott

Cardinal Pell is one of the greatest churchmen that Australia has seen. I am a very imperfect Catholic. Why shouldn't I go and seek counsel? Why shouldn't I go and trespass on the time occasionally of someone like Cardinal Pell? If you spent more time with Cardinal Pell, your life might be more interesting.

— Tony Abbott

Let's be upfront about this. I know Bernie is very sick, but just because a person is sick doesn't necessarily mean that he is pure of heart in all things

— Tony Abbott

That's bullshit. You're being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can't help yourself, can you?

— Tony Abbott

I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change... and I think that the economics of an ETS are a bit dodgy... [but] whatever second thoughts people like me might be having, I don't think it's a good look for the Opposition to be browner than Howard going into the (2010) election.

— Tony Abbott

The argument 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.

— Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

I guess in the end I'm a bit like Bill Clinton on this matter, who said that he thought [abortion] should be safe, legal and rare. And I underline 'rare'.

— Tony Abbott

“I certainly have always said that the whole issue here was to try to ensure that we empowered women…[and] gave women in a very difficult position all the support they needed to make what was for them the best possible choice”.

— Tony Abbott

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

— Tony Abbott

These people aren’t so much seeking asylum, they’re seeking permanent residency. If they were happy with temporary protection visas, then they might be able to argue better that they were asylum seekers

— Tony Abbott

All of the boats in question were in the Indonesian search and rescue zone and I want the fullest possible cooperation between Indonesia and Australia in places where Indonesia has, if you like, the legal responsibility under the law of the sea, but Australia has more practical capacity to help.

— Tony Abbott

Indonesia is a country for which I have a great deal of respect and personal affection based on my own time in Indonesia. I want nothing, but the best for Indonesia, and I certainly want, Leigh, I certainly want the boats stopped and that is overwhelmingly in the interests of both our countries.

— Tony Abbott

It seems that, notwithstanding the dramatic increases in manmade CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world's warming has stopped.

— Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

I think I would say to my daughters if they were to ask me this question... it [their virginity] is the greatest gift that you can give someone, the ultimate gift of giving and don't give it to someone lightly, that's what I would say.

— Tony Abbott

I probably feel a bit threatened, as so many people do... look, it is a fact of life and I try to treat people as people, and not put them in pigeonholes.

— Tony Abbott

Well, there is no doubt that (homosexuality) challenges, if you like, orthodox notions of the right order of things, but as I also said on the program, it happens, it's a fact of life and we have to treat people as we find them.

— Tony Abbott

It's not goodies versus baddies, it's baddies versus baddies and that's why it's very important that we don't make a very difficult situation worse

— Tony Abbott

WorkChoices is dead, it's buried, it's cremated.

— Tony Abbott

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.

— Tony Abbott

I know politicians are going to be judged on everything they say but sometimes in the heat of discussion you go a little bit further than you would if it was an absolutely calm, considered, prepared, scripted remark. The statements that need to be taken absolutely as gospel truth are those carefully prepared scripted remarks.

— Tony Abbott

Victory is within our ready grasp...We are in reach of a famous victory

— Tony Abbott

The poor will always be with us.

— Tony Abbott

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

— Tony Abbott

Well, that was one boat that did get stopped, wasn't it?

— Tony Abbott

No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS

— Tony Abbott

Fire is a part of the Australian experience.

— Tony Abbott

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

— Tony Abbott

As many of us know, women are particularly focused on the household budget and the repeal of the carbon tax means a $550 a year benefit for the average family.

— Tony Abbott

You know, I went to a Catholic school as a kid but no one did anything to me. Maybe I wasn't good-looking enough.

— Tony Abbott

Even the toughest politicians sometimes wonder whether political life is worth the personal cost.

— Tony Abbott

I have often pondered the psychology of people who seem uncomfortable with the society that has formed them. There is much about Australia I would like to change, but not its fundamentals.

— Tony Abbott

Only on the sports field are the British an alien tribe.

— Tony Abbott

In politics, what's not reported might as well not have happened.

— Tony Abbott

Dealing with terrorism and the Islamist fanaticism that inspires it is the great challenge of our time. Obviously there needs to be a very strong security response at home and abroad.

— Tony Abbott

The security response is necessary but it’s not sufficient. There also needs to be a concerted “hearts and minds” campaign against the versions of Islam that make excuses for terrorists.

— Tony Abbott

Although most Muslims utterly reject terrorism, some are all too ready to justify “death to the infidel”.

— Tony Abbott

We can’t remain in denial about the massive problem within Islam.

— Tony Abbott

Islam never had its own version of the Reformation and the Enlightenment or a consequent acceptance of pluralism and the . Fortunately there are numerous Muslim leaders who think their faith needs to modernise from the kill-or-be-killed milieu of the Prophet Mohammed.

— Tony Abbott

Islam needs to delegitimise the urge to “behead all those who insult the Prophet” but only Muslims can do this. That’s why everyone interested in a safer world should be reaching out to “live and let live” Muslims and encouraging them to reclaim their faith from the zealots.

— Tony Abbott

It’s also time Australians stopped being apologetic about the values that have made our country as free, fair and prosperous as any on Earth.

— Tony Abbott

Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.

— Tony Abbott

To live in Australia is to have won the lottery of life — unless you happen to be one of those whose ancestors have been here for tens of thousands of years. That’s the Australian paradox. Vast numbers of people from around the world would risk death to be here, yet the First Australians often live in the conditions that people come to Australia to escape. We are the very best of countries, except for the people who were here first.

— Tony Abbott

We need to attract and retain better teachers to remote schools. And we need to empower remote community leadership that’s ready to take more responsibility for what happens there. The objective is not to dictate to the states their decisions about teachers’ pay but to work with them so that whatever they do is more effective. It’s not to impose new rules on remote communities but to work with local leaders who want change for the better.

— Tony Abbott