Michelle Landr is a fabulous member of Parliament. She is a true representative of that community. She's a classic middle-of-the-road Australian who represents the interests of her community with passion and with a lot of common sense.

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

She is not being preferenced - she's not on our preference card because Pauline Hanson's view of Australia is basically a very - it's a very old view.

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.

It is a necessary precondition for the success of a referendum that there should be broad community consensus and bipartisan support for it.

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.

There wasn't a lot of music in the home when I was growing up. We didn't have a piano or anything like that but my grandmother, had been a well-known piano teacher.