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'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 great works belong to no one nation, no one cultural tradition even. They are universal.

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.

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.

We must break out of this mindset in Australia that we are a small nation on the other side of the world from the main, great Western nations. Australia is the twelfth largest economy in the world. We are a not insignificant player in commerce, in geopolitics and we must be in culture as well and we are.

If you were a person in Rockhampton who is wondering where your next job was coming from, and you had the prospect of one of Australia's largest ever coal projects with a very, very long life span being developed and reviving the regional economy. And you saw the Greens in particular doing their little best to stop it happening.