The Labor roots are very strong.Paul Keating, made a comment several years ago about looking at that dragging yourself out of poverty, dragging yourself out of that situation.

I'm a great lover of human beings.

Unless we confront our history, unless we deal with it and move forward, not with recrimination, and move forward then we're always going to have the problems.

I noticed - and this is one of the people don't understand of Tony [Abbot] - he grew. To me he grew as opposition leader. He come in - he wasn't really good at the beginning when he was opposition leader. He won the confidence of the Australian people and got the job as Prime Minister. He grew in Indigenous affairs. To me, we just totally disagreed in it, but now we're very much one on one on it.

If you don't learn about each other, you do not understand each other, and you don't hide warts and all, both sides, then you're forever going to repeat history.

My father was an old - fashioned bloke, and he actually told me one day, "I'm not your friend, I'm your father. My job is to bring you up, give you values for life and to ensure that you carry those values through."

I can convert anyone.