Malcolm Turnbull

All Australians understand that high-quality, reliable and affordable broadband is a critical part of the infrastructure our nation needs to prosper in coming years.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street, the battlers, by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever.

The only reason to be in politics is public service. There's no other reason. Frankly, if that's the best job you can get in terms of money, that's too bad, you know. Because frankly, it's not well paid, everyone knows that. So for most people it's a big sacrifice.

I am an ambitious person, but I am not ambitious in the sense that I want jobs only for the sake of them... I am here to do things I think are worthwhile. I am always careful that the political positions I take are consistent with good policy. I would not want to be prime minister of Australia at any price.

It's really corny to say, but if you are happily married and have good kids, that is about 98 per cent of what you should be seeking to achieve.

Governments enjoying surpluses have a very strong temptation to splash money around, and while tax cuts are always appealing, cutting taxes at the top of a boom runs the real risk of creating a structural deficit when the boom subsides.

In economics, one of the most important concepts is 'opportunity cost' - the idea that once you spend your money on something, you can't spend it again on something else.

To the former child migrants, who came to Australia from a home far away, led to believe this land would be a new beginning, when only to find it was not a beginning, but an end, an end of innocence - we apologise and we are sorry. To the mothers who lost the maternal right to love and care for their child - we apologise, and we are sorry.

My commitment to the Republican movement was pure and simply patriotism, a love of Australia... a desire or passion that all of our national symbols should be unequivocally and unambiguously Australian.

Those who condemn gay marriage, yet are silent or indifferent to the breakdown of marriage and divorce, are, in my view, missing the real issue.