All women need support when they're having their babies and their little families are in formation. I have to say I have a lot of concern about the numbers of women - and men, now - who are not getting the support that they need. There are not the families and the communities around that there used to be.

We all go back to our roots. My father went to the central west, went to Ilfracombe in 1919. He was the manager of the wool scour there. And, Ilfracombe was right at the heart of Australia's great wool industry, and my mother was a teacher at Winton.

One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!

It's a great privilege and an honour to have the experiences and opportunities that I do to meet extraordinary Australians right across our country who share a great generosity of spirit.

I will keep my word. My father fled Cuba, and I will fight to defend liberty because my family knows what it's like to lose it.

In the trunk of her car, my mother used to keep a collapsible easel, a clutch of brushes, a little wooden case stocked with tubes of paint, and, tucked into the spare-tire well, one of my father's old, tobacco-stained shirts, for a smock.

When I go home, I try to raise my children with honesty and integrity and teach them to take care of the world and of each other.

My father was a Jewish immigrant who settled in Argentina and was left to his own devices at the age of 15. My mother was a teacher, herself the daughter of a poor immigrant family.