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

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.

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

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.

A future where all Australians, whatever their origins, are truly equal partners, with equal opportunities and with an equal stake in shaping the next chapter in the history of this great country, Australia.

Australians are a passionate lot. We are also a very practical lot.

Something my mum taught me years and years and years ago, is life's just too short to carry around a great bucket-load of anger and resentment and bitterness and hatreds and all that sort of stuff.