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So the state has to be ready to take decisions. I don’t want a proprietorial state, or an interventionist state, but I do want the state to have the capacity to regulate and that people know that the state can do this. People should know that the state is prepared to act, although as long as private enterprise acts, it won’t. But when it’s necessary in order to defend the interests of the people, the state must be ready. And this is how I conceive of the state: it mobilises, oversees, regulates. It does not get involved as a proprietor, but is equipped to carry out works.

Petrobras is going to be the strongest company in the pré-sal. It’s important to remember that oil now belongs to the country, to the state. It doesn’t belong to Petrobras, Petrobras must buy it.

There is no case in the world, not in Norway, in Saudi Arabia, nor anywhere, in which a country that has discovered oil leaves the regulatory model the same as it was before it was certain there was oil.

I, an inveterate socialist when I was a union leader, will be the president who took part in the biggest capitalisation issue that the world has ever known. It wasn’t Bill Gates, it wasn’t Soros, it wasn’t any big businessman, it was a metalworker. When people say that I have am lucky, I say: Yes, I really am. I think that God has had a hand in it...

We’ve set up a fund. This money must be used to resolve some of Brazil’s chronic problems, starting with poverty, education, science and technology, culture. We’ve got to take advantage of this money, and not let it go down the drain, with each mayor or each governor spending it however he wants. This money must be controlled, and my idea is that it should be controlled by society, so that we can invest it from Oiapoque [Brazil’s northernmost town] to Chuí [its southernmost] to improve the lives of the Brazilian people. We have a great opportunity, to create a big oil industry, a big shipbuilding industry, to ensure that Brazil definitively joins the list of rich countries. I think that in the coming years we can be the world’s fifth largest economy, and to achieve this we are investing a lot.

I can say to Brazilians and to foreigners that this is unthinkable. For all our shortcomings, we have very organised social movements in this country, we have a functioning Congress, a functioning judiciary and we have a woman who, should she be elected, would be committed to democracy no matter what.

Dilma is just as democratic as I am, just as socialist as I am and just as responsible as I am. Perhaps being a woman I think she can do more, because we need to empower women in politics.

I went to Israel recently and said in its parliament: the very UN that created the state of Israel is the same one that should create a Palestinian state, draw the boundaries and establish the laws. It doesn’t happen.

There’ve awarded around ten Nobel Peace Prizes for the cause of peace in Israel and the Middle East, and peace hasn’t happened. Those people should return their Nobel prizes, since there’s no peace.

He said: “No, that’s not what I wanted to say. I was trying to say that around 70m people were killed in the Second World War and only Jews have become the victims.” I said: OK, then say that. That’s different from saying that the Holocaust never happened. Then we got onto the nuclear topic, and he complained of Obama, he complained about Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Sarkozy. And I said: Have you already talked with any of them? “No.” I went to Pittsburgh: Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Obama had made harsh statements about Iran. I went and asked all of them: Have you talked to Ahmadinejad? “No.” Now, how can you outsource politics? Politics can’t be outsourced. Politics is one politician talking to another. When it comes to putting things down on paper, in come the lawyers and the diplomats, but decisions have to be taken eye to eye between two democratically elected people.

We have the world’s cleanest energy matrix, that most sequesters carbon, and I don’t know why the rich countries, who talk so much about climate change, do nothing to change anything. Why was it that in Copenhagen the US put forward a proposal to cut emissions by just 4%? Europe could have offered 30% and offered only 20%. And everyone is starting to talk of money, as if poor countries were beggars who, if they were to receive just a little aid in dollars, could reduce their growth. We don’t accept this. What’s at issue is the planet Earth, and we all live on it. We need to talk seriously.