I've always been a lover of classical music ever since I was an early teenager I suppose. I remember the very first piece of classical music that grabbed me was I bought an LP of Daniel Barenboim performing Mozart's piano concertos and I would have been about 14 or 15 at the time and I remember I played it over and over again.

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've never been one of those people, who subscribe to this notion that the book is dead.

I was President of the Queensland Young Liberals in 1981.

Malcolm Fraser, in the marrow of his bones, despised racism. He despised people who discriminated against other people because they were different and in particular because of the colour of their skin, and I don't think there has been a time in Australian politics where there has been more attention to the importance of that value.

I don't really know a lot about these 'anti-protest' laws. I'm only vaguely aware of them, but I don't have enough detailed knowledge about them to comment.

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