I was President of the Queensland Young Liberals in 1981.

One of the things about federal politics is that it has been remarkably free of corruption.

I joined the Young Liberals when I was 16 and it was a good way for me to understand how the Liberal Party worked and to learn basic political skills and techniques.

The arts are part of a nation's identity, they are part of a nation's soul and when we look at a country from the eyes of people overseas they are part of a nations branding in the world as it were.

The tyranny of distance is such an important element of policy and the allocation of resources.

It is a necessary precondition for the success of a referendum that there should be broad community consensus and bipartisan support for it.

The crime of bribery of foreign officials is an offence under the Commonwealth Criminal Code.

I don't really know a lot about these 'anti-protest' laws. I'm only vaguely aware of them, but I don't have enough detailed knowledge about them to comment.

I was interested in politics since the age of 14.

There have been 44 constitutional referenda in Australia and only eight have succeeded.

The modern Australia, the Australia of the 21st Century, Malcolm Turnbull's Australia has nothing to do with the kind of protectionist and xenophobic attitudes that Pauline Hanson represents.

Confidence is highly erotic.

If you have an anecdote from one source, you file it away. If you hear it again, it may be true. Then the more times you hear it the less likely it is to be true.

I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue. Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.

I just don't think men fancy me.

Books seek us out. They slip themselves into our hands just at the time we are ready for a new self-concept.

True friendship resists time, distance and silence.

We thought that the proletariat would eventually run the world. But it is the Americans who have assumed that position... The American people have changed.

People more think of me as a party animal. Which, I am a self-proclaimed party animal, but I'm also the hardest working person you'll ever know.

There is one thing where people are always right. It is when they are describing what they have been feeling when watching your film. You cannot say: No, you did not feel like that!

The unique essence of being an artist is dying. Eveything looks the same. Now there’s a formula. And it works. - But it takes away from the reason we do it.