Last week I sat around a table with Connie Hedegaard. Connie is the Danish minister for climate, and will host the United Nation's major climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.
I was impressed by her determination to see a global deal reached to try to limit the impacts of rising carbon pollution, and her passion that it be one that is fair for all - rich and poor - and for the generations to come.
She told the group of concerned representatives from non-government organisations that it was vital that Australia have a committed deal to take to the conference, as one of the nations that can act as a leader on this issue.
Her message was that Australia must have its position ready, and not just sit waiting for others to act.
The same day I met with Cobus de Swardt at La Trobe University. Cobus is head of the international group Transparency International (TI).
Its principal aim has been to root out corruption globally, which is a major impediment to developing nations securing good standards of governance and accountability, something that is vital if communities are to benefit from economic growth.
Cobus said that TI had been impressed by the achievements of Make Poverty History, and was committed to reducing poverty through the Millennium Development Goals.
So he said we would see TI increasingly move into advocacy in this area. Cobus said the debate about corruption in developing countries was sometimes seen to undermine the arguments for increased aid.
But, he said, on the contrary, TI believed in increased aid, in the goal to halve global poverty by 2015, and said "we don't want corruption to be used as an excuse not to increase aid".
Some of the more enlivening sessions I have as I travel are with students. Young people are vocal in demanding that their future welfare, and the wellbeing of the planet, are part of the conversation with policymakers, politicians and business leaders.
I had a fantastic occasion with 250 young people at St Margaret's school in Berwick, just on the eastern edge of Melbourne. These were young people who have learnt about fair trade and the realities of exploited and sometimes trafficked children - and who are going to take their coffee and chocolate consumption seriously!
And at a breakfast at Marcellin College, in Bulleen, the sense I had listening to the students was that they get these issues of the global village - the interdependence of the world's major issues of financial crisis and poverty and health and terrorism - much quicker than their parents.
