The arts are part of a nation's identity, they are part of a nation's soul and when we look at a country from the eyes of people overseas they are part of a nations branding in the world as it were.

I think the cultural programming on the ABC is one of the glories of the ABC.

Opera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.

There could be constitutional problems with executive detention if it is seen to be arbitrary. I didn't actually say that the NSW Government's proposed anti-terrorism bill was necessarily unconstitutional - that was sloppy journalism - I said that executive detention may raise constitutional problems if it is seen to be arbitrary as being an invasion of the judicial function.

I think it would be frankly a retrograde thing for Pauline Hanson to be elected to the Senate.

I think there has only ever been one member of the Federal Parliament from either side found to have been corrupt in the whole history of Australia. I don't think we should create the architecture to solve a problem which barely exists.

One of the senior Labor frontbenchers from Queensland, Terri Butler, said that she was against the Adani mine. So that is the clearest statement we've had from a person who would be a member of a Shorten government, that if there were to be a Shorten government as far as she's concerned, the Adani mine wouldn't go ahead. People in Rockhampton know that and they're very worried about it.