I'm out there arguing the Labor case. I will do it anywhere and everywhere that I can. I do it within various communities across Australia where I am able to make a positive contribution. And let me tell you my voice won't be silenced in the public debate because the issue at stake for Australia are so stark.

I launched Chefs for Humanity a national nonprofit with my voice heart and money from my own pocket. Money gives you the ability to make a difference in the world and when used in a positive way is a lot of fun.

I've been singing for six years. I've been in and out of the studios with top producers but it wasn't something I was ready to express to the public or to the press. I wasn't ready to come out. I wanted to perfect my voice and be 100 percent positive that I could come out right.

Positive adj.: Mistaken at the top of one's voice.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

Of course there are regrets. I shall regret always that I found my own authentic voice in politics. I was too conservative too conventional. Too safe too often. Too defensive. Too reactive. Later too often on the back foot.

What drew me to politics in the first place was the fact that I wanted to have a place to take a stand and use my voice to express what I believed in. But I've no longer got any political aspirations. I feel that as a politician fifty per cent of people would hate you before you even left the house.

Poetry had far better imply things than preach them directly... in the open pulpit her voice grows hoarse and fails.

I have always wanted what I have now come to call the voice of personal narrative. That has always been the appealing voice in poetry. It started for me lyrically in Shakespeare's sonnets.

A poem in form still has to have voice gesture a sense of discovery a metaphoric connection as any poetry does.