Dad was a great advocate for social justice and a very quiet advocate of the essential Labor values.

A lot of young women ask me, 'Can you go into politics and maintain your ideals?' Well, I think you can. You might not, in any one interview, tell the whole truth, but to deliberately deceive the public who've elected you is totally unacceptable.

Just by making a decision to stay out of politics, you are making the decision to allow others to shape politics and exert power over you. And if you are alienated from the current political system, then just by staying out of it, if you do nothing to change it, you simply entrench it.

I used to get into the government car and switch on Chopin or someone I liked to hear at the end of a parliamentary day.

A commitment to human rights cannot be fostered simply through the transmission of knowledge. Action and experience play a crucial role in the learning process.

In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.

I will continue my activities related to education in one way or another. I certainly would have at the top my agenda, with respect to education, the need to do much better with modern educational technology.

While NCLB drove important progress on transparency and data disaggregation, I think it's clear that the status quo in public education is not working for our kids or our country.