Capricornia there is a particular regional particularity and that is the Adani mine. We know that Adani, the massive Indian coal company, wants to develop the Carmichael mine... And people in Rockhampton know that and they know that the Greens are doing everything they possibly can to prevent the development of the Adani mine.

We need to tell Australian stories,we need to encourage and fund and present Australian work but we also need to understand that for a sophisticated, educated, culturally aware, modern nation we can't be parochial.

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

The great works belong to no one nation, no one cultural tradition even. They are universal.I want an Australian vision of arts policy that is expansive, is embracing, is not narrow, is not parochial. For example, that Australians can do Shakespeare just as well as Englishmen can because we, like every civilised nation, partake of the great canonical works. It's not about Australian nationalism; it's about our identity as a culturally ambitious, culturally sophisticated nation.

I'm reading Barnaby Rudge, one of the less well-known Dickens novels. I've been a life-long lover of Charles Dickens ever since I think A Tale of Two Cities was the first Dickens novel I read.

Let's be frank: if there are hardened terrorists [Australian] who are fighting overseas, we don't want to see those people come back to our shores. But if we could stop youngsters, teenagers from falling into the snares of ISIL or Jabhat al-Nusra or other terrorist organisations through parental intervention and other strategies then, we hope to be able to rescue them before they commit these crimes.

I was President of the Queensland Young Liberals in 1981.