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

Opera Australia has a mix - it produces new work, it produces from the classical repertoire and, particularly in more recent years, it's done those blockbuster musicals which are very lucrative for it and reach an audience that classic opera or a new opera perhaps wouldn't reach, like South Pacific for example.

I think it would be frankly a retrograde thing for Pauline Hanson to be elected to the Senate.

We have a great literary tradition in Australia. I think the book is very much alive and the more people who are encouraged to read books the better our society will be and the wiser our society will be.

The tyranny of distance is such an important element of policy and the allocation of resources.

The political bug first bit me was Malcolm Fraser's resignation from the Gorton Government.

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.