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.

We have a great literary tradition in Australia. I think the book is very much alive and the more people who are encouraged to read books the better our society will be and the wiser our society will be.

Capricornia is one of the most marginal seats in the country. So naturally the electoral battle is fought in the marginal seats.

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 am a very, very strong advocate of the notion that we shouldn't equate the arts with other aspects of infrastructure. They have a unique role in any civilised society and that requires appropriate and targeted government support.

The thing about Dickens is you either love him or you hate him and I fell in love with Dickens, I fell in love with his prose style and I decided that I wanted to read the whole Dickens verve during the course of my life.

I was President of the Queensland Young Liberals in 1981.