I joined the Young Liberals when I was 16 and it was a good way for me to understand how the Liberal Party worked and to learn basic political skills and techniques.

I decided few years ago to leave the bar to pursue a career in politics because I wanted to make a contribution in Parliament.

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.

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.

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

There always are a basket of issues in any federal election campaign, but in this part of Australia [Capricornia] I can assure you having as you know a fairly frequent visitor to Rockhampton, that the issue of jobs and employment and where the jobs of the future are coming from, is the biggest single issue on people's minds.

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.