You will never find a better friend to the United States than Australia.

If consulted by friends about marital dramas, I always encourage the singles to marry, the married to stick together, the neglectful and wayward to renew their loving commitment and the wronged to forgive.

I love radio - its immediacy and especially its intimacy... it is part of your life, whispering into your ear. You can't see it, but equally importantly it can't see you.

We will certainly have to rethink the way in which we design and protect places where large numbers of Australians and indeed this will happen around the world.

Nobody looks at opinion polls with more attention than politicians, but of course you've got to remember that a single poll is a snapshot in time.

What you've got to do is recognize that you don't control everything for a start, you've got to play the cards you're dealt, the hand of cards you're dealt, as best you can, and that's what I always seek to do.

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street, the battlers, by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.