It was right after the horrific report out of Ireland about abused children and the role of the church. The conference discussion centred on the theme that even in the last five to ten years, our attitudes to the rights of children has changed. All sorts of things in decades past were swept under the carpet that ought to have been deemed totally unacceptable.

While I was in Sydney I caught up with the CEO of Fair Trade, Rob Cameron. He said for the first time in Great Britain people were now surviving totally for a month on a fair trade diet. In Australia, we are way behind, only coffee and chocolate. which would end up with people looking like ‘super-sized and totally-wired-me'.

I told him that what Britain had been able to achieve through lobbying and improving consumer choice was something that needed a lot more attention in Australia, working with the supermarket chains to improve their stocks of Fair Trade products.

Our Don't Trade Lives campaign website helps explain the links between our choices as consumers, and some of the impacts in the developing world of unfair labour practices and even slavery and child exploitation.

On the previous Saturday night I was in Adelaide, and met with a remarkable group of students.

The Kalahari Project and the Concordia school are sending a dozen inspiring young people to teach disadvantaged students through an intensive study program in the Moshaweng Valley in Botswana in southern Africa.

It was hosted by Sue Germain, a remarkable woman who was working for World Vision in Africa when U2's Bono was touring one year and who helped open his eyes to the needs of people in poverty in Africa.