It is a fact that governments tend to put in place policies and strategies in response to current scenarios.

There are genuine concerns about the status of children to be sent to Malaysia and also there are genuine concerns about the human rights record in Malaysia.

When the Australian Government looked at how to meet the challenges, and the opportunities, presented by our ageing population, it saw that an all-encompassing approach was a prerequisite.

The concern is the Government is not coming clean and informing the Australian public of the assumptions that they have made to give rise to a $10.4 billion package.

My understanding of religion and science is that they're both arrogant schools of thought, and whether they acknowledge it or not they continually broadcast the idea that they have the world figured out. And what they don't know, they have a theory for which is probably correct. It feels like that shrinks the world, rather than expands it.

Apparent contradictions between religion and science often have been the basis of bitter controversy. Such differences are to be expected as long as human understanding remains provisional and fragmentary.

When I became a professor of physics circa 1991, I doubled the number of female professors of physics in the U.K.

I took classes taught by an elderly woman who wrote children's stories. She was polite about the science fiction and fantasy that I kept handing in, but she finally asked in exasperation, 'Can't you write anything normal?'