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.

The Labor Party has always - always been praised as leaders. In fact, there's probably more books written about ALP leaders and the ALP people than the Libs or anyone else in Australian's history, but there was substance to it.

I can convert anyone.

A good government is one with a duty to help everyone, to maximise his or her potential: Indigenous people, people with disabilities, and our forgotten families.We will not leave anyone behind.

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.

We were very - we were a working family, and my father had this very simple philosophy, simple working class approach. If you spoke to my father and said, "Mr Smith across the road, what do you think of Mr Smith?", he'd only - he'd only say a couple of words. He'd say, "He's a worker", and that meant this bloke got up in the morning, went out, worked, brought his money home, fed his wife and kids, housed them, got them to school, educated them, made sure they were safe and all that. It had so much connotations to it.

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.