Senator Obama's message of hope is not just for America's future, it is also a message of hope for the world as well. A world which is now in many respects fearful for its future.

If you accept it to be natural and normal to be gay then it follows it is not right for two folk who love each other to be denied marriage.

There are many who criticise the United Nations. And those of us who know this institution well know that it is not immune from criticism. But those who argue against the United Nations advance no credible argument as to what should replace it. Whatever its imperfections, the United Nations represents a necessary democracy of states.

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

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

John Howard has gone a bridge too far by not going far enough

It is unlikely that you'll have anything emerge from MEF (Major Economies Forum) by way of detailed programmatic specificity.