Australia's economic future depends upon getting smarter. This means investing in the skills and knowledge of our workforce.
When someone has found not just another person they can live with but a person they can't live without, they should have an equal right to the true qualities of a bond that runs deeper than any law.
My father left school at 14 and became a fitter. He didn't want to be at school.
It is devastating that jail is seen as a rite of passage for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, part of the natural order of things. It is an outrage that there is an attitude that this is normal. This is not normal. We can't shrug our shoulders and say this is just a 'fact of life' in remote Australia.
There is no doubt our earth is warming and our seas rising - or that humankind is the cause. There is no evidence to refute this - or any genuine scientific counterargument in the climate change debate.
Safe Schools has been labelled a lot of things: Marxism, cultural relativism, 'grooming,' and part of something called the 'rainbow ideology.' But Safe Schools is not about imposing an ideology or an 'ism.' It's about teaching our kids to treat everyone equally, to understand rather than judge.
We commissioned an independent statutory economic body - the Productivity Commission - to review the possibility of funding a disability scheme. The commission returned with a view that it could. Then it becomes an issue of national will.
To the best of my knowledge, when I became national secretary and, indeed, Victorian secretary, the - my predecessors in the union had detected wrong activities, activities which aren't in the best traditions of the AWU or, indeed, trade unionism.
