We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition.

I have very real concerns about the civil liberties implications of ultimately requiring every resident to submit themselves for compulsory fingerprinting or some other biometric test.

A modern health and social care system has to be completely focussed on the needs of its users.

And I hope very much that the ALP will become increasingly engaged in the international discussions that are taking place amongst centre-left parties generally.

Certainly we know from our own experience how very difficult it is when you've lost an election that perhaps a lot of people were expecting you to win.

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.

The accusation that we've lost our soul resonates with a very modern concern about authenticity.

Business leaders must not cling to old ways of doing business, or allow inertia or complacency to prevent them from making the decisions that they will eventually be forced to make.

And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.

Fifty per cent of the public doesn't know what 'fifty per cent' means.

You've got to respond to that and of course thinking through the role of a left party in the modern world, in the modern economy and society and having a policy response to that.

For the loot, honey, for the loot.

With childhood comes a brief grace period of ignorant bliss -- when you're not aware of the pain around you. That is the most special, truly unique time. It is the core of adult lament.

As to Magyar, I think that my speech was incorrect, inappropriate.

We don't measure our people's success in how they're doing in government. We measure how they are doing in the real world and the private sector economy.

Once you've been in a mental institution, people are going to look at you funny.

Budget: a way of going broke methodically

There's one thing I always wanted to do before I quit... Retire!

Elections to office, which are the great objects of ambition, I look at with terror!

Tridents (sic) are not weapons of mass destruction.

The world has gotten smaller and more accessible since I first started writing in the 70's.