If we are strategic, if we are smart, Australia can power our future prosperity with solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal energy.
We have to become a learning society, committed to quality education from early childhood right through to re-training in later life.
I believe marriage equality is a simple change that sends a powerful message. It is a chance for us to say, as a nation, to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex Australians: your love is equal under the law.
Productivity is driven at the enterprise level. Better wages, better performing workplaces, are driven at the workplace level.
If I am elected leader, my shadow opposition team will actively incorporate the policy contributions of all our members by instituting policy action committees as recommend by the 2010 National Review.
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.
When I entered federal parliament at the end of 2007, I was appointed parliamentary secretary for disabilities.
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.
Trusting people to pursue their own futures invariably provides better outcomes. Money goes where it is needed, rather than being absorbed by administration costs.
Labor should not be about creating monuments on hills or statues in parks. Labor's monuments and statues are when a young person can find a job, when a person with disability can get access to the ordinary life that others take for granted.
Labor is at its best when we are the party of ideas and action - ideas that empower the powerless and actions that build a better Australia for the long term.
I want to build a Big Labor party. A party of big ideas. A party which is deeply connected to the community. A party which reflects our diverse nation.
Labor must work harder to attract and retain members. The party should be cheaper to join with discounted rates available for union members as well as for students, pensioners, and people out of work.
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.
Workplace relations is about getting the best out of people. An argument which says that the only way we can compete with other nations in the world is engaging in a race to the bottom in terms of pay rates, penalty rates, protections on rosters, getting rid of family friendly provisions - that is not Australia's future.
Poverty wastes people; it wastes opportunity.
My father left school at 14 and became a fitter. He didn't want to be at school.
Both my parents were far smarter than the opportunities they had.
This is what I think about poverty: why waste the potential of people? You never know what you've got going in society unless you give people a chance.
