Julia Gillard

If G20 leaders are serious about sustainable growth and job creation and want to stem migration flows and promote long-term stability, education is an essential investment.

In fragile and conflict-affected states, education can insulate children from chaos and insecurity and better prepare them to bring about future stability.

Whether or not you welcome it, moving house requires you to make choices about the past as you move into the future. What of all of your bits of stuff is truly valued? What should be left behind?

Our future growth relies on competitiveness and innovation, skills and productivity... and these in turn rely on the education of our people.

My guiding principle is that prosperity can be shared. We can create wealth together. The global economy is not a zero-sum game.

A literate, skilled workforce is essential for low-income countries to attract investment and fill jobs with local rather than imported labour.

I know people are looking at what's happening in Washington and then they also look at events in Europe, in Greece and Portugal and other places and worry about that.

If you believe, as I do, that merit is equally distributed between the sexes, then any result that isn't around half and half should be troubling.

My earliest political memory is of attending, in 1975, a tub-thumping campaign rally with my father in Adelaide.

As prime minister, I was conscious of walking in Whitlam's footsteps as our government set about creating a companion to Medicare, the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I first felt the addictive power of 'Game of Thrones' when I was prime minister, living in a world where power was also pursued relentlessly, albeit far less colourfully. Certainly, the characters of my world were nowhere near as good looking or exotically dressed.

I want you to know what I have told Australia's Parliament in Canberra - what I told General Petraeus in Kabul - what I told President Obama in the Oval Office this week. Australia will stand firm with our ally the United States.