Peter Costello Quotations

What have the Americans ever done for us?

Senator Sherry claimed $300 to stay with his mum at Opossum Bay.

She has no plan for Australia and the divisive and vicious future that she is promulgating will be repudiated,

Mr. Gerard is eminently suitable to be a member of the Reserve Bank board, ... He is a fit and proper person to be on the board.

I did not find this an easy decision, ... In fact it is one of the hardest decisions one could ever face in public life because it was so evenly poised.

He got a tax cut of $100,000 and you only got $1.

I think it could be done in a clean, safe way to deliver cheap energy and we in Australia have the energy they need.

It is in Australia's interests that we promote it in preference to other areas,

part of the Western tradition of individual rights. If you dont like those values, then dont come here.

The deadline cannot be extended past April 24, when he will announce his decision,

The progress is gradual and I think it will be some time before China has a floating currency as we know it.

Exports have been disappointing. Higher petrol prices and a waning of the housing boom contributed to the recent moderation in household consumption growth.

As the world economy has changed, so too, these institutions must change,

I've said before and I'll say it again, that we have to be vigilant,

the suggestion that this Parliament should pass a new tax law so that the taxpayer picks up some of the obligations will not be agreed to.

There is one law we are all expected to abide by.

These wage costs show that there are real wage increases going on in the community, but they are restrained and consistent with low inflation, provided the economy maintains productivity growth,

Increasing demand in East Asia can be met from Australian interests, the Middle East or projects being developed north of Japan, ... but I want it to come from the North West Shelf.

In the Year 2525, if man is still alive...

But in the end the decision was mine and I made it.

I can't understand how clubs would allow it. They might say, 'well it's a legal drug and there is nothing wrong with taking it,' but it sends a bad example when you (take) pills like that.

The FIRB could not come to an agreed position and presented two alternatives, ... with one alternative prohibiting the offer and the other approving it but with conditions.

You find actually over the years that you get attributed with a lot of things you didn't do and you don't get reported on a lot of things you did do and I must say, when I read some of these things I wonder where the journalists get them from. They generally speak to somebody who's spoken to somebody who was down the back of a pub who heard the barman say, and gradually finds its way into magazines or articles but no, that's not the case.

As I'm lying there at my funeral I would hope to hear somebody say, “Look, he's still moving!

Before becoming an Australian you will be asked to subscribe to certain values. If you have strong objections to those values, don't come to Australia.

You know in politics you are dealing in the realm of choices. You don't always have clear-cut decision between a thoroughly principled position and a thoroughly unprincipled one. You're making snap decisions with paucity of information, generally trying to do the best that you can, but you will make errors, and sometimes it's a decision between a bad and a worse alternative. It has to be done, because we need to order our society, and of politics it can literally be said: Bad job, but someone's got to do it.

I think Australians are rightly suspicious of people who will try and use religion for another end. I don't think that's right and I don't think it should be done, but I think it should inform values, and it does.

The prudential regulation that I have put in place has been absolutely critical. The fiscal policy which we have put in place has been absolutely critical and if people looked at Australia now turn its back on economic reform, which of course industrial relations rollback or throwback would be, let me tell you, that would really start affecting confidence.

This is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don't feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they'd feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs

If you want to save, put money into superannuation, you will never find a better savings vehicle.

Our system of government is one of checks and balances. It requires compromise.. compromise between the Executive and the Parliament, compromise between one House and another, compromise between the States and the Commonwealth and compromise between groups of persons with legitimate interests and other groups with other legitimate interests. There is room for compromise.. indeed demand for it.. in a system of checks and balances.