Top 50 Malcolm Turnbull Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “We learn from every natural disaster. Whether it’s a fire or a flood, we learn something from it so we can respond to the next one better.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

2. “What you’ve got to do is recognize that you don’t control everything for a start, you’ve got to play the cards you’re dealt, the hand of cards you’re dealt, as best you can, and that’s what I always seek to do.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

3. “People learn from failure or from lack of success.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

4. “The way to lose weight is to eat less, so I ate a lot less for a month and lost a lot of weight pretty quickly.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

5. “We are already experiencing the symptoms of climate change, especially with a hotter and drier climate in southern Australia – the rush to construct desalination plants is an expensive testament to that.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

6. “There’s the occasion when politicians will say things that are simply not true or that they make commitments that they have no intention of fulfilling. That is something that I think should not happen. That’s a no-no. That’s a third rail that you shouldn’t touch.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

7. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

8. “Climate change is a global problem. The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues, truly catastrophic consequences are likely to ensue from rising sea levels, to reduced water availability, to more heat waves and fires.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

9. “I’m sick of the cover-ups, I’m sick of the lies, and so are the bloody veterans, that come out daily of the department’s mouth.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

10. “The proliferation of outlets that digital technology has enabled has itself contributed to the changing nature of what we regard as ‘news’ and the way in which many citizens perceive politics.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

11. “Anyone who thinks it’s smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

12. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

13. “I don’t find myself in moral turmoil. I’m not given to turmoil of any kind.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

14. “While our energy efficiency is improving, there is a very high correlation, almost near perfect correlation, between GDP growth, and energy usage.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

15. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

16. “If Margaret Thatcher took climate change seriously and believed that we should take action to reduce global greenhouse emissions, then taking action and supporting and accepting the science can hardly be the mark of incipient Bolshevism.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

17. “When politicians offer you something for nothing, or something that sounds too good to be true, it’s always worth taking a careful second look.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

18. “The most effective check and balance on government has been an independent press which maintains its credibility by ensuring that its criticism is balanced and based on fact – based indeed on solid journalistic work.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

19. “I try to talk about policy issues intelligently, I try very hard to avoid thought bubbles. I make sure my speeches are well researched and footnoted. I make sure I am not talking through my hat.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

20. “On balance, after weighing the arguments, I believe that the time has come for Australia to create a new sovereign wealth fund.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

21. “The fact of the matter is that nothing is achieved in this world, particularly politically, other than with persistence, and persistence involves repetition and it involves argument and re-argument... The public interest in free speech is not just in truthful speech, in correct speech, in fair speech... The interest is in the debate. You see, every person who has ultimately changed the course of history has started off being unpopular.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

22. “There is a tendency to try to dumb everything down and turn everything into a one-paragraph press release or even less, just a slogan.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

23. “You cannot keep on saying oh, you know, talking about disrespecting women as just being politically correct or it’s not a big deal or brushing things off. You’ve got to be aware of it.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

24. “Let us be honest with each other. The threat to marriage is not the gays. It is a lack of loving commitment – whether it is found in the form of neglect, indifference, cruelty or adultery, to name just a few manifestations of the loveless desert in which too many marriages come to grief.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

25. “Mitt Romney speaking to a $50,000-a-plate Republican fundraiser says he doesn’t have to worry about the 47 per cent of Americans who don’t pay tax. He was not counting on the smart phone recording his speech and then posting it on YouTube.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

26. “If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

27. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

28. “I believe that politicians should speak the truth all the time. Invariably there will be occasions when you make statements that are factually incorrect due to an error.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

29. “I’ve been around in public life for a long time. I think people know what I stand for. They know that I have strong convictions, committed principles and I’m prepared to stand up for them.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

30. “Honest people, knowledgeable people, really well-informed people can have very different views about what the right measures are on national security.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

31. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

32. “Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you’ve got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

33. “China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

34. “You’ve got to remember that it’s a two horse race. So when the Government is doing badly the Opposition is doing better and vice versa.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

35. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

36. “I do not believe we can effectively move Australia to a lower emission economy, which is what we need to do if we’re going to make a contribution to a global reduction in greenhouse gases, without putting a price on carbon.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

37. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

38. “But who knows, some years from now if there’s a global emissions trading scheme agreement, as many have hoped for, then I’m sure Australia would be part of it.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

39. “I believe politicians should aim to be accurate and truthful in what they say at all times. You can be truthful and inaccurate but what you shouldn’t be doing at any time is saying things that are untrue or making commitments that you have no intention of honouring.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

40. “Are not the gays who seek the right to marry, to formalise their commitment to each other, holding up a mirror to heterosexuals who are marrying less frequently and divorcing more often?”

— Malcolm Turnbull

41. “Newspapers are busily experimenting with different models. Traditionally, and I suspect in hindsight very mistakenly, online news was free. And once given free access readers felt it was their entitlement.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

42. “Everyone’s got different views. I think you’re better off staying within the party and prosecuting those views than stepping out of it.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

43. “The question of whether or to what extent human activities are causing global warming is not a matter of ideology, let alone of belief. The issue is simply one of risk management.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

44. “Many Liberals are rightly dismayed that on this vital issue of climate change we are not simply without a policy, without any prospect of having a credible policy but we are now without integrity. We have given our opponents the irrefutable, undeniable evidence that we cannot be trusted.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

45. “Look at countries like China, they are determined to dominate all clean technology areas, putting lots of money into wind, solar, electric vehicles and battery storage. America’s political impotence, caused by their terrible partisanship, will see them left behind.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

46. “The Liberal Party is and always has been an amalgam between the conservative and the liberal with a small L traditions. And so from time to time people will see it emphasising one more than the other. I think it is genuinely an amalgam between the two.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

47. “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.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

48. “The biggest review of taxation ever undertaken in this country, is now dead in the water.”

— Malcolm Turnbull

49. “Greece is an extreme case: a country where both the level of spending and the level of taxation were unsustainable!”

— Malcolm Turnbull

50. “People invest in companies in order to get a share of the profit that company will make. If the Government increases its share of the profits, potential profits, at the expense of the owners of the company, the shareholders, then that makes investment in that company less attractive.”

— Malcolm Turnbull