If Australia wants an effective United Nations, we have to be comprehensively, not marginally, engaged.

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.

I was elected by the Australian people to bring back a fair go for all Australians. I have given my absolute best to do that.

I'm out there arguing the Labor case. I will do it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I do it within various communities across Australia where I am able to make a positive contribution. And let me tell you, my voice won't be silenced in the public debate because the issue at stake for Australia are so stark.

The time has now come for the nation to turn a new page in Australia's history by righting the wrongs of the past and so moving forward with confidence to the future. We apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians.

Politics is about power. It is about the power of the state. It is about the power of the state as applied to individuals, the society in which they live and the economy in which they work. Most critically, our responsibility in this parliament is how that power is used: whether it is used for the benefit of the few or the many.

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