When I came to Australia, it was like heaven.

Where I lived in Glasgow looked like Dresden after the war. It was a bomb site. I don't think I'd ever played football on grass until I moved to Australia.

It's a real bloke thing, not talking to people because it's not manly to get help.

You see politicians talking about negative gearing or tax on your second home - most people I knew growing up couldn't afford the rent, let alone buying a house, or a second house.

Everything that happened to me as a child was the perfect breeding ground for a rock n' roll singer. It toughened me up. I was on edge; I was needy. I needed people to like me 'cause it made me feel safe... and that gave me confidence.

Where I grew up, there were times when we didn't have anything to eat.

My mum and dad came from lower-working-class Glasgow, which was tough. Literally, if you see a cat there with a tail, it's a tourist.

Around 2001, I went to rehab in Arizona, and I started to see what was going on and how the past affected me. I started to get a grip on it. But over the next decade, I reverted to the behaviour I used to protect myself when I was young - being mindless, being defeatist and full of bravado.

We're a whole country full of migrants - we need each other, and we should help each other.

It's one of the beautiful things about Australia that people do get to share this life here, away from trouble.

I know that life is full of lessons to be learned, and my children will have to learn their own, but I hope I have broken the cycle of shame and fear that plagued my childhood.

I think it's criminal the way poverty is allowed to flourish.

I'm one of those people who can't sit still. I like to be doing something. I cook; I've been painting.

I'm hyperactive.

I was probably born an alcoholic.

When I first started, all the reviews of Cold Chisel would say, 'This singer won't have a voice in six months.'

If anything, I label myself as sort of Buddhist. My wife Jane is Buddhist.

In 1972, I climbed out of my bedroom window and ran away from home with my older sister and her friends to go to the infamous Sunbury rock festival.

For a long time, it was all about chart position. 'If my record doesn't come in at No. 1, I'm a failure.' I cared too much about what people thought of me, and that was symptomatic of the trauma from my childhood.

I never take for granted how great Australia is and how well I have been treated here, so thank you for this chance at making a good life.

There are new children arriving and trying to reach our lucky country every day, and I hope that we can all work together to help them find their dream, too.

I hate fear politics.

I don't want to become a laid-back artist by any stretch of the imagination.

If there was one thing I tried to instil in my children as they were growing up, it was that you get nothing for nothing. You have to work hard to get any rewards. That applies in music or whatever you choose to do. The same goes in relationships; you will only get back what you put in.