We have a prime minister, I'm the foreign minister, I'm trying to get on with the job of doing Australia's foreign policy.

We are moving toward recognition of the first Australians in the Australian constitution.

By way of personal instinct, I have an inherent distaste for grandiose rhetorical statements, which don't have any substantive dimension to them

I deeply believe that if the Australian Labor Party, a party of which I have been a proud member for more than 30 years, is to have the best future for our nation, then it must change fundamentally its culture and to end the power of faceless men. Australia must be governed by the people, not by the factions.

The alternatives [to the stimulus packages] were to do nothing or, worse, effectively replicate the Premiers' Plan of 1931 when governments cut expenditure, thereby compounding the problems created by a private sector already in retreat. The result, of course, was an economic rout, appalling unemployment and a decade of negligible growth through the 1930s

Compassion is not a dirty word.. it's time we rehabilitated compassion into the national political vocabulary of this great nation of ours.

We have a prime minister, I'm the foreign minister, I'm trying to get on with the job of doing Australia's foreign policy.