Both My Parents Loved Words. That Was

If A Man Is To Lose His Fortune, It Is A Good Thing If He Were Poor Before He Acquired It, For Poverty Requires Aptitude.

What's Wrong With Leading The Way? We've Played That Role Before, After All. We Gave The World The Secret Ballot... That Did So Much To Raise Living Standards And Improve Conditions For Workers Worldwide. We Were A Leader In Extending To Women The Right To Vote. We Were Barely A Nation When We Set The Bar For Bravery And Sacrifice By Common Soldiers In Foreign Wars. We Grew Up Out Of Racism And Misogyny And Homophobia To Become A Mostly Tolerant, Successful Multicultural Society. We Did These Great Things Because We Know We Are In It Together. It Is Our Core Value As Australians.

If Screenwriters Have To Kill Off A Female Character, They Love To Give Her Cancer. We've Seen So Many Great Actresses Go Down To The Big C: Ali Macgraw, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Debra Winger, Susan Sarandon.

And One Of The Things That I Learned Was You Can't Generalise At All About A Woman In A Veil. You Can't Think You Know Her Story, Because She Will Confound You Over And Over Again. She May Be An Engineer Or A Diplomat Or A Doctor. Or She May Be An Unbelievable Babe With Bleached Hair Down To Her Waist.

Both My Mum And Dad Were Great Readers, And We Would Go Every Saturday Morning To The Library, And My Sister And I Had A Library Card When We Could Pass Off Something As A Signature, And All Of Us Would Come With An Armful Of Books.