Well I think all I would say on that is, when we were in opposition in Britain and Hawke and then Keating were in power here, Labor was in power here, we learnt a huge amount from the ALP's experience here.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

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

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

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

The 2 million people who work in the NHS and social care are also themselves patients and users. I know they all want to treat patients and users the way they and their families would want to be treated and that is the purpose of our reforms.

But getting your party structure right may also be a precondition for getting your policies right.

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.

You don't repair that relationship by sitting down and talking about trust or making promises. Actually, what rebuilds it is living it and doing things differently - and I think that is what is going to make the difference.

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.

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.

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.

So there clearly is a sense in which the Labour Party here, certainly at State level is reaching out and connecting with people and reflecting the aspirations and needs of, you know the mass of ordinary Australians.

Well I think all I would say on that is, when we were in opposition in Britain and Hawke and then Keating were in power here, Labor was in power here, we learnt a huge amount from the ALP's experience here.

And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

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 think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more.

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.

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

We're seeing quite a lot of people who really would like a return to class-based politics.

Barbara Castle should have been Labour's - and Britain's - first female prime minister. What a role model she would have been: passionate, fiery, and absolutely committed to social justice.

Barbara Castle was a hero to millions of British women. She inspired a new generation of women to become active in Labour politics, including, of course Labour's deputy leader, Harriet Harman.

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past - whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

Education is a private matter between the person and the world of knowledge and experience, and has little to do with school or college.

A novel should be an experience and convey an emotional truth rather than arguments.

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

Learning teacheth more in one year than experience in twenty.

Well, the hardest thing to do, as we know from our own experience on 9/11 is protect everything all the time.

The most important training, though, is to experience life as a writer, questioning everything, inventing multiple explanations for everything. If you do that, all the other things will come; if you don't, there's no hope for you.

When I reached adulthood, even now, I could afford to belong to a country club. But I could never belong to a private club because of my experience as a child, because it would isolate me from the whole of humanity.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

If you live long enough, you'll experience everything.

Actually I'd had a certain amount of experience in Europe in the inter-war period, as a banker, and I was also a member of the Board of Directors of the International Chamber of Commerce.

In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc.

Well, I go to the theater today, and its curtain - there is no curtain in this play; the lights go down and go up - and we start. And I live this character for two hours. There are only two of us in the play. And It's a complete experience.

Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

In my fifty years of experience and memory, I have seen the most amazing increase in the standard of living of a people ever achieved anywhere in the world. This is why I am so sure that our system of free competition and industrial development is sound and must be preserved.

The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.

It's been my experience that every time I think I know where it's at, it's usually somewhere else.

The experience of learning how to get straight to the core of a problem proved to be of immense value later when I had a long succession of responsibilities in large, complex government departments.

I view life as a learning experience. It is not so much all about music; it is about what happens when you are doing the music.

I feel, sometimes, as the renaissance man must have felt in finding new riches at every point and in the certainty that unexplored areas of knowledge and experience await at every turn.

From this experience we have learned that in a big party it is important to have the necessary and often controversial discussions on policy issues such as the health system while in opposition.

I had an amazing experience working with great people. I had a great family, a typical family with drama in certain areas, and that's pretty much everywhere in everyone's life.