Reconciliation will not work if it puts a higher value on symbolic gestures and overblown promises rather than the practical needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in areas like health, housing, education and employment.

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.

As far as I'm concerned, any Aboriginal that gets out there and accepts money that has been put out as a package for this bicentenary is actually accepting blood money. We've still got people with leprosy and we still got tremendous problems. These problems have not been our problems, they're the problems of the European population of Australia.

If I told my parents that I was going to do that [ to be really counsel to a Prime Minister] when I was kid, they would probably put me in therapy.

You always felt not happy about things, but you just couldn't put your finger on what was going.

Marists are workers, we do all the work and Jesuits just think about it.

I can convert anyone.