Tony Abbott Quotes

I'll be accountable to the Australian public at the next election - they expect us to stop the boats and that's what we are doing.

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

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.

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

However long my public life lasts — in government or out of it, in parliament or out of it — I intend to persevere in this cause. Some missions, once accepted, can never really cease. Of course, the future for Aboriginal people lies much more in their own hands than in mine, but getting more of them to school, and making their schooling more useful, is a duty that government must not shirk. An ex-PM has just one unique trait, and that’s a very big megaphone, and I will continue to use it to see this done.

(The pollie pedal charity fundraiser is) an opportunity to stop at lots of little towns along the way where people probably never see or don't very often see a federal member of Parliament.

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 Jesuits had helped to instil in me this thought that our calling in life was to be, to use the phrase: 'a man for others'.

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.

The poor will always be with us.

We pledge to the families of Australia that we will never make your lives harder by imposing unnecessary new taxes.

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.

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

The love and commitment between two people of the same sex can be as strong as that between husband and wife... There is more moral quality in a relationship between two people devoted to each other for decades than in many a short-lived marriage. Still, however deeply affectionate or long lasting it may be, the relationship between two people of the same sex cannot be a marriage because a marriage, by definition, is between a man and a woman... Let's celebrate all strong relationships, whether they are between a man and a woman or between people of the same sex but let's be careful about describing every lasting sexual bond as a 'marriage'."

Mr Speaker, standing before you in this chamber, which is heir to 700 years of parliamentary tradition, I feel like a very small boy in a very big school. To my parents and to my grandparents; to my sisters, who have made me what I am; to my wife, my mainstay; to my priceless friends; to my party, which has given me the privilege to serve, I give my heartfelt thanks. To the Jesuits who first encouraged an ideal of public service; to Bob Santamaria, who sparked my interest in politics; to several editors, who honed my way with words; to John Hewson, who introduced me to this place; and to John Howard, who has been the contemporary politician I admire most, I hope I can be true to the principles you taught. May God and the ghosts of great men give me strength. May those who have laboured greatly to build this nation fortify my resolve to make a worthy contribution in this House.