35 Quotes by David Marr

He doesn’t see private health insurance rebates or support for private school education as middle-class welfare. He sees it as backing family aspiration, sound public policy encouraging people to do more for themselves. And help should not be cut off simply because a family is earning a hundred thousand dollars or more a year.

While he was pilloried for enforcing a severe regime of punishment to force them to look for jobs, he was trying behind the scenes to persuade the government to take another course entirely. He wanted tax breaks for those on welfare to encourage them to take work. This was his one big idea in the portfolio and he has cited it since as evidence that somewhere inside the Liberal Party the DLP was alive and well. But not very alive: the plan was killed off by Howard.

He invaded the Women’s Room with a Channel Ten news crew and cub reporter Mike Munro. The issue was voluntary fees. The point was ridicule. When asked to leave the room, Abbott declared for the cameras: “This is a man’s room for the moment.

Bill ran the box office for the 1983 Romeo and Juliet, played the piano, endured elocution lessons, fenced and played cards: bridge at Xavier but later five hundred. Shorten’s love of cards – of bluff and bidding – is a key to the boy and the man. Only in his final year did he outshine his brother as a debater; he was chosen for the state team in the national championships of 1984.

Turnbull is sharp with Jones once or twice, asking to be heard, reminding him his heroes Margaret Thatcher and John Howard wanted action on global warming: “Don’t you think,” asks the leader of the Opposition, “you sound like the old lady who says the whole world is mad except for thee and me, and I have my doubts about thee?

A happy Hickie verdict on Abbott: “He’s not a reformer; he’s a great opportunist.

He wanted the assurance from the department that nothing was going wrong underneath. But as long as that was the case, he didn’t really want to get into all the detail of how the Job Network was actually running. He was not hands-on. He was generally interested in employment but he was not one of those ministers who run their department.

They see a lot of pit bull pups at the RSPCA, her handler tells me. Why? “Because young guys have pit bulls and they are idiots and they don’t desex their dogs.

From the moment Julia Gillard became prime minister, Abbott’s mantra has been: “If you want to stop the boats, you have to change the government.” But for that to keep working in his favour, it’s best the boats keep coming.