“There is a history and a reality that we cannot ignore. The challenge before us is real, the questions we grapple with as elemental as life and death.”

When I entered federal parliament at the end of 2007, I was appointed parliamentary secretary for disabilities.

Productivity is driven at the enterprise level. Better wages, better performing workplaces, are driven at the workplace level.

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.

Labor should not be about creating monuments on hills or statues in parks. Labors 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.

The whole time I was a union leader, we had to put up with John Howard and Tony Abbott attacking workers’ conditions.

What I believe to be every Australian’s right – a good, safe job with proper pay and conditions.

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.

Trusting people to pursue their own futures invariably provides better outcomes. Money goes where it is needed, rather than being absorbed by administration costs.

My preference is that employees pay their union dues, but what I also get is that I’d rather someone be in the union than not in the union.

I’ve spent my whole working life standing up for workers. Didn’t matter if it was the two trapped miners at Beaconsfield or professional netballers or indeed factory workers or construction workers.