Dad was a great advocate for social justice and a very quiet advocate of the essential Labor values.

A lot of young women ask me, 'Can you go into politics and maintain your ideals?' Well, I think you can. You might not, in any one interview, tell the whole truth, but to deliberately deceive the public who've elected you is totally unacceptable.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.

I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of a parliamentary day.

My whole thing is that I want to explore why you read books, what's the purpose of reading, and maybe that it's not that cool to hate something just because it's popular.

All I want is an education, and I am afraid of no one.

Growing up as a classical musician, you're taught a lot about outreach and about how people aren't being taught music in school. But you don't have to study music to like it. And a lot of the music that people like - be it jazz or rock or opera - is stuff they haven't studied.

Countries that need monies so that they can provide health care and education and shelter to their people shouldn't have to repay debts that we knowingly lent to bad regimes long since gone; and all illegitimate debts - debts lent to these terrible dictators like Saddam Hussein, like Suharto, like Marcos - must also be canceled.