It is a necessary precondition for the success of a referendum that there should be broad community consensus and bipartisan support for it.

If there were to be a Labor-Greens government, that would be the end of the Adani mine, that would be the end of coal mining in central Queensland, and that would be the end of their best shot at economic prosperity in the future.

I think it's very, very important that people outside the capital cities, not just Sydney and Melbourne but also Brisbane Perth Adelaide and so on, have the greatest access to the best cultural experiences they can in both the performing arts and the visual arts.

There have been 44 constitutional referenda in Australia and only eight have succeeded.

That was an extremely unhelpful thing for Bill Shorten to say because those of us - and as the Attorney-General I've been closely involved in this along with my colleague Nigel Scullion, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs - what we have been trying to do for some years now, throughout the life of the Coalition Government in fact, is to bring the Australian people on a journey with us - conservative Australians as well as more progressive Australians, to persuade them that it is a seemly and fitting and decent and appropriate thing to recognise the first Australians in the Constitution.

I decided few years ago to leave the bar to pursue a career in politics because I wanted to make a contribution in Parliament.

I was interested in politics since the age of 14.