We know that children living in a household with someone in work do better in school, have better educational attainment, and are more likely to have a job later in life than children growing up in a home where no one works.

I guess, as a young girl growing up in Liverpool in the '80s, when unemployment was high, my ideal job would have been to have been Minister for Employment to see, can you solve these problems? Can you get people into work?

I always thought, as I was growing up, that I'd be married with children. That hasn't happened.

When I was growing up, my parents put money into food, utility bills, and the mortgage.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

Establishing the rights for gay people to be married would cost the Australian government nothing financially and would gain for you worldwide respect from people like us and, of course, would change lives enormously - the lives of gay people and of their friends and of their families and therefore of Australia as a whole.

People everywhere face the threat of control by government and technology.

I was surprised that when you get into electoral politics how scientific the analysis was in the electorate. You can identify on a state-by-state or district-by-district basis fundamental building blocks that behave in different ways. I was impressed in general with the sophistication of polling.