As a Liberal of course I am very strongly committed to the notion of artistic freedom and very hostile to the idea of there being a single view of cultural policy dictated from on high.

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.

The Coalition's message of jobs and growth is resonating very, very strongly in North and Central Queensland and one thing they're particularly fearful of is the possibility of a Green-Labor government, a government in which the Green tail wags the Labor dog.

One of the things about federal politics is that it has been remarkably free of corruption.

I think it's important to have a blend just as we need to have by the way a mix of different opera companies and different arts companies.

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.

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