Via Nikki J’s Scrapheap…
On immigration:
1. ‘Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it’s not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.’
2. ‘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’
On rights at work:
3. ‘Bad bosses, like bad fathers and husbands, should be tolerated because they do more good than harm’
On women:
4. ‘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.’
5. ‘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’
6. ‘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’
7. ‘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, every year…’
On Julia Gillard:
8. ‘Gillard won’t lie down and die’
On climate change:
9. ‘Climate change is absolute crap’
10. ‘If you want to put a price on carbon why not just do it with a simple tax.’
On homosexuality:
11. ‘I’d probably … I feel a bit threatened’
12. ‘If you’d asked me for advice I would have said to have – adopt a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy about all of these things…’
On Indigenous Australia:
13. ‘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’
14. ‘Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that…’
15. ‘There may not be a great job for them 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’
On Nicola Roxon:
16: ‘That’s bullshit. You’re being deliberately unpleasant. I suppose you can’t help yourself, can you?’
