"I didn’t appreciate the symbolism of it, and the importance to Indigenous people."

“They won't be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English. These people would be taking Australian jobs, there's no question about that. For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there's no sense in sugar-coating that, that's the scenario.”

“New Zealand don’t contribute really anything to the defense effort that we’ve got where we’re trying to surveil boats that might be on their way to New Zealand, so I hope that Andrew Little reflects a little more on the relationship between Australia and New Zealand where we do a lot of the heavy lifting.”

“Some people are trying it on. Let’s be serious about this. There are people who have claimed that they’ve been raped and came to Australia to seek an abortion because they couldn’t get an abortion on Nauru. They arrived in Australia and then decided they were not going to have an abortion. They have the baby here and the moment they step off the plane their lawyers lodge papers in the federal court which injuncts us from sending them back.”

“Some of the crazy lefties at the ABC, and on The Guardian, Huffington Post, can express concern and draw mean cartoons about me and all the rest of it. They don’t realise how completely dead they are to me.”

“Time doesn't mean anything when you're about to have water lapping at your door.”

“Somebody once said to me that the world’s biggest collection of Armani jeans and handbags up on Nauru waiting for people to collect when they depart.”