All Australians understand that high-quality, reliable and affordable broadband is a critical part of the infrastructure our nation needs to prosper in coming years.

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'

Broadcasters or politicians or writers who think that they are respecting Struggle Street, the battlers, by dumbing things down into one-line sound bites are not respecting them, they are treating them with contempt. It's our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them.

Gone are the days when your indiscretions at university were recorded in a roneoed college newsletter of which there is only one copy left tucked in a filing cabinet at the back of a library. Today that same college newsletter is online, accessible by the whole world now and forever.

I am from the age of magazines, so the Internet is terrifying to me. But I am learning.

If someone is trying to skip the struggle - which is the creative job - our machines today, the technology that we have, can help the person, but it is only momentary. On the other hand, if you are creative, you have the skill, and you are hardworking, technology can only make you superior.

American politics used to be an amateur sport. But somewhere along the way, we handed over to professionals all the things people used to do for free.

A lot of people like me who worked in Republican politics had a personal set of beliefs on issues that were at variance with the candidates that we worked for.