The things which are most important don’t always scream the loudest.

Institutions do live on their history.

I led the fight here against apartheid as President of the ACTU, including particularly the Springbok tour in 1971. And that led to the banning of the South African cricket tour which had been scheduled - that was something that I sorted out with Sir Donald Bradman. That was interesting.

Unless and until something concrete is done about addressing the Israeli-Palestinian issue you won't get a real start on the war against terrorism.

In sum, the truth is that we luxuriate in the comfortable assertion that women enjoy equality. We have salved our consciences by eliminating the more obvious discriminations like unequal rates of pay for work of equal value. But, in fact, we have not eliminated the inheritance of the millennia that women are lesser beings, an inheritance which still manifests itself in a whole range of prejudice and other forms of discrimination.

I hated [Robert Mugabe]. He's one of the worst human beings I've ever met. He treated black and white with equal contempt. He was a horrible human being.

We had a very good relationship. Very good. I liked [Sonny Ramphal]. I thought he was a genuine man.