Tony Abbott Quotes

It is vital that the entire international system is ready to meet the challenges of future disasters.

In a world full of competing emergencies and disasters, it really helps if there is an international locomotive that can help us bring attention - help us bring resources.

The international community should treat this as a window of opportunity to ramp up preparedness and response.

That was for instance the case in Mocambique a couple of years ago, during the flooding catastrophe. Instead of co-ordinating assistance properly, to much time and resources was spent on fighting about the same helicopters and local guides.

We are taking the steps necessary to be ready to send whatever assistance is requested of us, and we are preparing to receive citizens who seek refuge in our state.

When millions of dollars and thousands of humanitarian workers poured into Indonesia, we quickly faced the challenge of coordinating our own bureaucracy with the multitudes of approaches and priorities the donor community wanted to pursue.

I can only hope the federal aid made available today will be sufficient in our recovery efforts, and pray that our citizens continue to be safe from the fallout of this dangerous natural disaster.

Whenever there is an international crisis - an earthquake, a flood, a war - Americans provide more assistance than the people of any other nation.

The U.K. alone cannot be left to help those who have lost everything.

Once again, victims of disaster have turned to the UN and the international community in their time of need, .. The world needs the UN's leadership in these times, and the UN needs the world's support. We are communicating with the UN and its agencies to learn where UN Foundation funds may be of greatest assistance to the UN's relief efforts.

Australia would play its role in taking displaced people from the Syrian conflict.

We at the U.N. have to take some of the blame, because we have not lowered expectations creating the impression we are here to save people, even when we have very limited resources.

As the wealthiest country with all the blessings that we have, do we have an obligation to help the outside world? I think we do, as we have an obligation to help everyone within our own borders. The problem is that this automatically gets translated into: "What's the point of having a huge military if we can't bomb people?" That's the problem that I have. Our foreign policy is essentially our defense policy.

We can solve world peace and world famine.

Decisions are made by those who show up. Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

After the tsunami in Japan, we were open for business. In fact, I flew there 10 days after the tsunami to show our support for the Japanese people.

Hurricane Charley is the worst natural disaster to befall our state in a dozen years, and it is unthinkable that anyone would try to take advantage of neighbors at a time like this,.

First there is the search and rescue phase that is now ending. It is a cruel reality.

And I, unfortunately, have been to too many disasters as president.

Who takes care of their people better? FEMA or Hezbollah?

We have already provided a strong humanitarian response to the problems in the Middle East and that response will be stronger within coming days.

I think there was an overemphasis in the early stage on militarization rather than directly providing relief. I don't think it has any long-term significance.

We shouldn't have a program where we just say that we're going to take care of the world's refugees. Nobody in the Middle East is doing anything. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait - all the Gulf nations are doing nothing.

We should be focused on the Haiti earthquake victims, not on what contracts your company should get, if you're a friend of Bill [Clinton].