Julia Gillard on Q+A

HAMISH MACDONALD

There’s nothing quite like a global pandemic to test the mettle of a leader. So, what does a former prime minister make of what’s unfolding both here at home and across the world? Julia Gillard is the only woman to have held the top job in Australia. Her path to power was a memorable one. 10 years later, she’s written a book on women and leadership, and acknowledges there are some things she would do very differently. You’ve overwhelmed us with questions tonight, so let’s get you some answers. Welcome to Q+A.

Hi, there. Welcome to the program. Would you please put your hands together for Julia Gillard.

JULIA GILLARD, FORMER PRIME MINISTER

Oh. Thank you very much.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Remember, you can stream us on iview, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. #QandA is the hashtag, so please do get involved – and be nice. You’ve sent us some great questions tonight on everything from feminism to global politics and Julia Gillard’s record as leader. We’ll attempt to get answers to as many of them as we can. You’re also still sending us, obviously, lots of questions on how we’re managing our response to COVID-19, so, joining us a little later in the program, infectious disease expert Professor Raina MacIntyre will be here to answer some of the specifics on those. But we’ll start tonight in Victoria. Our first question is from Marie Walker, who’s live in Frankston South.

MARIE WALKER

Hi, Hamish. Hi, Julia. I live alone, as my husband died last year. And now that we’ve gone back to Stage 3 restrictions, I’m really quite concerned for my mental health, which is generally pretty well managed. My grandkids live in country Victoria, and during the last lockdown I was needed to mind them, and my oldest grandchild came here for his home-schooling and lived here for three weeks, and I know that seeing them and my contact with them helped me to get through that time. Now they are back to Stage 2, I’m in Stage 3, so I won’t be seeing them any time soon. So, could you tell me what is available, in addition to tele and online services, that might be able to support me and people like me, who are perhaps even more vulnerable than me, to get through this next time?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Now, you’ve got lots of hats, Julia Gillard. One of them is with Beyond Blue. Is it easy to answer that question?

JULIA GILLARD

I’ll try and give the best answer I can. Everybody’s circumstances are different, but what I certainly know from the Beyond Blue view on the world is that many people are feeling exactly like you. In fact, we saw a more than 60% increase in contacts towards Beyond Blue when lockdown was announced, so people were reaching out. What we make available is a telephone line, so you can actually talk to a mental health professional, and get some recommendations about how to manage your own mental health, and if you need some more assistance, where to go for services. Inevitably, in a lockdown situation, many of those are provided through a telehealth or online mechanism. And the website itself has a wealth of resources to, you know, try and help people get through.

But it’s not easy. I mean, what I would say is social distancing doesn’t have to mean the end of contact. There’s ways of staying in contact with your family, whether that’s videoconferencing or talking regularly on the telephone – that’s really important. Maintaining some sense of routine is important. Basic tips – physical health. You know, if you’re feeling well physically, that makes a difference for your mental health.

But for all of us, I know it can be hard to feel it at this time, but we are going to get through this, you know? It’s a limited stage. It’s not going to be forever. There will be a time when you’ll be back in the same room with your family again. And the sacrifice you’re making now is such an important one. It’s, you know, going to keep people safe. One of the things that helps me think about it is, you know, there aren’t too many times in our lives when we could say that we’re helping save lives. You know, it’s normally police officers and firefighters and nurses who can say that. But at this time, we can actually all say, “We’re doing things to save lives.” And you most certainly are.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Marie, I’m interested to know, this second time round for you, is it that lack of human contact, the...the physical separation from the people you know and love?

MARIE WALKER

Yes, because the grandchildren, they’re the only ones...the only other humans that I’ve touched in this time, and that touch is really important. And I’ve got a strong support network of family and friends, but this time everyone is taking it much more seriously – which is a good thing. But everybody is keeping their distance, and we don’t know how long it’s going to go for.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I suppose you can have all the telehealth in the world, all of the helplines – nothing really can make up for that, can it?

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah. I think...

MARIE WALKER

No.

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah. Exhaustion’s a big factor here too. One of the things in the psychological reaction that I think we’re seeing now is people kind of thought they’d reached the finishing line, and as human beings, we sort of measure the effort and we think, “Oh, the finishing line – we’re at the finishing line!” And then, suddenly, “Oh! No. The finishing line’s right over there.” And that’s really wearing and exhausting, and that’s what people say when they contact Beyond Blue. And I don’t have any magic answer for that. I don’t think there is one. We’ve just got to be able to think through that it’s important, we know it will end, and support is available. And, certainly, all of the evidence shows that if you reach out early, get some tips and strategies, that can prevent things snowballing and getting worse.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Marie, we really appreciate you joining us tonight, and we’ll be thinking over...thinking of you over the coming weeks.

MARIE WALKER

Thank you very much.

JULIA GILLARD

Nice to talk to you.

HAMISH MACDONALD

And I should point out, of course, that if you or anyone you know is experiencing difficulties, some of the numbers that Julia Gillard was referring to there are, Lifeline – 13 11 14. There’s also the Coronavirus Mental Wellbeing Service and website – coronavirus.beyondblue.org.au.

Well, our next question tonight is from Liam Fitzpatrick in the studio.

LIAM FITZPATRICK

Whether it’s Trump in the US, Bolsonaro in Brazil, or Johnson in the UK, the pandemic has exposed the shortfalls of populism and the “strongman” style of leadership. Do you think the future of global politics lies in the styles of leadership exhibited by female heads of state like Merkel in Germany or Ardern in New Zealand? And do you think that there’s something to be said for the distinctly feminine style of leadership being the answer to navigating this crisis?

JULIA GILLARD

Well, great question, and thank you for it. I’m not a believer that men and women are inherently different in terms of their leadership styles. I don’t think it’s predetermined. It’s not that our brains are different. But we are socialised differently, and male and female leadership is received differently. And so the evidence that we looked at when we were writing the book shows that a female leader, to succeed, has to manage a balance between strength and empathy. If she’s too strong, people will go, “Oh, she’s not very likeable. We don’t like her very much.” If she’s too nurturing and caring, people will say, “She hasn’t got the backbone to lead.”

So, women leaders are already very highly skilled in this balance of strength and empathy. And I think, at a time like this, people want both. They want to know that someone’s getting the job done, but they also want someone to care about how they’re feeling. And I think people like Jacinda Ardern, and Erna Solberg in Norway, have really been able to put that together. Chancellor Merkel, as you refer to. What you can’t do in this time is that blustering, strongman, “I know, I can tell you, facts don’t really matter” style of leadership. That’s catastrophic, because this is a time when, unless you’re following the science, you can’t possibly be doing the right thing.

So, I’m sort of optimistic. I know, at a time like this, to say you’re optimistic about something is a little bit sort of controversial, but I’m sort of optimistic that, out of this time, we’re getting a really strong reminder that government matters, and who you choose to lead your nation really matters, and even if you’re frustrated and you want to send people a little bit of a lesson, you should be still voting for people who have got the competency to do the job. And evidence matters. And I think that, in politics in the last few years, people in many parts of the world have lost a sense of both of those things. And if we take those with us into the stage beyond the pandemic, then that’ll be better for global politics.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Is there a layer of nuance, though, to this question of what leadership has worked during this crisis? Because you have countries like Singapore that have done quite well. It’s a very different version of democracy, if you want to call it that. China has obviously been incredibly effective at being able to neutralise the threat – at least, they were for some time. Doesn’t that slightly challenge this concept that sort of Western democratic female leaders are the...are the winners here, and it’s...it’s other forms that...that are less successful?

JULIA GILLARD

I don’t think you can simplify it too much. I mean, the statistician in me would say the sample size isn’t big enough, and by the time you’re...

HAMISH MACDONALD

The sample is as big as it gets.

JULIA GILLARD

Yes, unfortunately, this is the sample size of women leaders we’ve got. And when you’re reeling off nations like Germany, Norway, New Zealand, Finland, you’re talking about countries that have got some natural advantages and resources, and so you’ve got to control for that as well. There’s not one way of managing through a pandemic, but I think that balance of strength and nurturing, strength and empathy, does matter to people. So, whilst more authoritarian responses can get an outcome, whether the populace, if it was free to accept...free to project its view, would say that’s the style of leadership they wanted, I think is a pretty open question.

HAMISH MACDONALD

How do you think our leaders in Australia have done? I’m talking about the Prime Minister, but the premiers too.

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, I think, across Australia, people have done very, very well, and I’ve been really pleased to see the spirit of bipartisanship that has been brought to the task. So, you know, a conservative prime minister working with Labor premiers – the opposition leaders at every level helping support the government. You know, we’ve really had a national effort here. And whilst, you know, errors will be made, people are human, some things will go wrong, I’d rather be here than almost anywhere else on the planet. I came back from London in mid-March, just as things were starting to look more and more grim with the pandemic, and I’ve never been more grateful to feel those wheels touch the tarmac than at that time.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Do you think that bipartisanship, that cooperation, is holding up under the pressure of this second spike?

JULIA GILLARD

Broadly, I think it is, yes. I think it would have been tempting for people to take very cheap shots along the way, but I think, broadly, the bipart...

HAMISH MACDONALD

There’s been some. I mean, we can’t ignore reality here.

JULIA GILLARD

There’s... Yeah, look... But compared with business-as-usual politics, I think you would say a lot of bipartisanship has been held. And I’d also want to pay tribute... You know, the politicians sit on top of a big machine called government, and this big machine’s got public servants and people with health expertise and various instrumentalities that for years have been practising what they would do in a pandemic and honing the skill set. And that’s come to the fore as well. Without that institutional heft, then, even, you know, with good leadership, we wouldn’t be in the position that we are today.

HAMISH MACDONALD

You talk about that. Did you ever actually imagine what it would be like, when you were leading, that our country, our world, would be in a situation like this?

JULIA GILLARD

Yes. We used to practise for it. I mean, as long as...

HAMISH MACDONALD

You do the scenarios. Did you actually think, “That could...that could happen”?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, yeah. As long ago as when I was Shadow Minister for Health and Tony Abbott was Minister for Health, we did a pandemic preparedness exercise where everybody – you know, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health, the premiers – spent a day pretending that they were in the middle of a pandemic, with various scenarios emerging and political decisions having to be made about whether you’d put roadblocks up and whether you would contain a population that had been exposed to the pandemic disease. And, you know, I only had a sort of humble role in it because I was the Shadow Minister, but there was a moment when the Minister for Health had to ring the Shadow Minister to advise of the circumstances to try and maximise bipartisanship. So, it all sounds pretty weird, like we were, you know, playing a...a game, but it was one way of testing institutional systems and responses and working out where the weak spots were.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I’m interested to know how close this reality has been to what you...you experienced in those rehearsals, as it were.

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, I mean, that was, you know, a one-day exercise where we had all sorts of curve balls thrown at you to deliberately test the system. So, this has been a much longer period of time, and I don’t think any one-day war game can prepare you for the relentlessness that leaders are going through and the system’s going through, meeting this pandemic. But, you know, I do think doing things like that, facing off challenges as we have in the past – bird flu and the rest of it – we have strengthened the system, and that’s been all to the good.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. Our next question tonight is a video from Grant Smith in Collingwood in Victoria.

GRANT SMITH, COLLINGWOOD, VIC

What is the actual endgame here in Australia in regards to COVID-19? We as a state and country knew the reopening of businesses and economies to get back to some kind of normality was going to come with increased risk of a second wave and more community transmission. It’s inevitable. The situation in Victoria is evidence of this, and as a Victorian now, I’m wondering, where does this end – not just for Victoria, but for the rest of the country? What are the state and federal governments actually trying to achieve? Total eradication? This brings me to ask, are we kidding ourselves that lockdowns are the answer? Or are we hiding behind the couch, only to stick our heads out yet again and get hit again with another lockdown?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright, at this point, we’re going to bring in another voice to help us answer these questions. Professor Raina MacIntyre is the head of biosecurity at the Kirby Institute. Nice to see you back on the program, but I suspect we all wish it were in better circumstances. Can you answer that question simply – what’s the endgame here for Australia?

RAINA MACINTYRE

The endgame is a vaccine. Without a vaccine, there’s really no certainty around where we’re going and how we’re going to get out of it, because there is a pandemic that’s going on, it’s getting worse, and it’s really the worst pandemic of anyone’s lifetime, of most people living today. Arguably, it’s even worse than the 1918 Spanish flu. So, you know, we...we can wish that it wasn’t there, and I think we can look to Sweden for...as an example of the sort of fallacy that, if you just carry on as normal and let the disease rip through the community, that everything will be fine. They did not have any economic benefits from doing so, from what I understand, but just had a much higher death toll and, you know, a much higher burden on their health system, and a lot of preventable deaths and illnesses that occurred as a result.

HAMISH MACDONALD

We are, though, seeing a lot of these arguments re-emerge now that were prosecuted early on in this, about elimination or suppression or, as you describe it, ‘letting it rip’. But the circumstances are different now because we’ve had months of the economic impact of this too. Do you have a view as to whether our current approach is still the right one – suppression?

RAINA MACINTYRE

Yes...yes, it is the right one. The... And there isn’t a choice between disease control and the economy. If you don’t control the disease, the economy’s going to fare worse. So, really, you have to just find that balance between allowing as much economic activity as possible, and at the same time, you know, managing the disease so that you’re minimising morbidity and mortality – the deaths and the hospitalisations – and keeping your health system still standing.

HAMISH MACDONALD

But these are the sorts of decisions that no leader, obviously, wants to make, but do you see it getting harder and harder to make the argument for what we’re doing as this goes on?

JULIA GILLARD

I think it does get harder, in the sense that the economic damage gets more profound, and people simply get more weary of it, and we’ve already had that expressed tonight. I think it’s been difficult for everyone to get their head around the waves of this. We did all want it to be, yeah, two or three months we’d have to lock away, and then it would be back to normal. And I think the realisation now is really with us that, for the next few years – until we get a vaccine – that there will be times of restrictions, times of loosening, times of restrictions.

And getting our heads right for that, getting the economic settings right for that, is incredibly complicated, and something that I think leaders at all levels are still working through, and we, as individuals, are still having settle on us. I mean, just, you know, to give an example from my own world... I do a lot of work internationally. I came back home in a hurry in March, and when I first came back, I was thinking to myself, “Well, when will I next get to London for the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, which I chair?” And I thought, “Oh, maybe I’ll be able to make the October trip.” Well, you know, that’s just...

HAMISH MACDONALD

That deadline keeps getting pushed back.

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah, that’s... You know, now it just seems silly to say that I ever thought I’d be back in London as early as October. Of course I won’t be. But, you know, that’s just one example of how, I think, all of us have had to digest new deadlines and that this is going to take much longer than we originally hoped or thought.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Raina MacIntyre, obviously, Victoria is in a difficult position. There’s some signs to be worried about in New South Wales as well. Do you think it’s inevitable now that New South Wales ends up doing something similar to Victoria, and instituting additional lockdowns?

RAINA MACINTYRE

I don’t think it’s inevitable, but it’s possible, particularly because there would have been a lot of movement between the borders from Victoria to New South Wales in the weeks leading up to the lockdown...to the border closure. And we don’t really know yet. It’ll still take a few weeks to really know whether there are any other silent epidemics growing in the community in New South Wales.

HAMISH MACDONALD

New restrictions, I understand, are being introduced tomorrow on pubs in New South Wales – the size of groupings. Are these changes enough?

RAINA MACINTYRE

I think the gatherings inside places like pubs and, you know, enclosed environments, they’re the most problematic, because we’ve...we’ve heard of a lot of outbreaks in these enclosed settings, where there isn’t necessarily good ventilation. You know, sort of outdoor gatherings are much safer than indoor gatherings of large numbers of people, particularly when you can’t track who’s come in and out of those places.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. We also had a lot of questions about masks. So, I need you to give us the simplest answer you can on this. Do they work? Should we be wearing them?

RAINA MACINTYRE

Yes, masks work. They prevent both transmission of infection if you are infected... So, the thing about COVID-19, and what’s really diabolical about it, is that people can have no symptoms at all but be infected and infectious. So, people with no symptoms who don’t even know that they’re sick can be spreading it. So, if you’re wearing a mask and you are infected and don’t realise it, you are much, much less likely to spread it to other people. And also, wearing a mask will protect you, if you’re well, from inhaling contaminated droplets or being coughed or sneezed on, so it works both ways. There’s a lot of evidence now that masks work, both against other respiratory infections and also from a WHO-commissioned study on COVID-19, SARS and MERS coronavirus.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. Raina MacIntyre, we appreciate your time. Thanks so much.

Alright, our next question tonight is in the studio from Satara Uthayakumaran.

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

As a young woman, I have big dreams, and aspire to one day represent my country on the world stage. However, I’m often told that this is unrealistic – that I will never become a leader of this country because of my gender or skin colour, and if I did, I would inevitably bear the brunt of much hate and pain. As our first female prime minister, what advice do you have for young women of colour, who, like me, have big aspirations for the future, but are constantly discouraged for these reasons?

JULIA GILLARD

My advice would be, if you’ve got a passion for leadership, a passion for politics, to absolutely go for it. No dream is too big. You know, I came from an ordinary family. If anybody had suggested to me or my mother or father when I was your age that I’d end up as prime minister, it would have resulted in lots of laughter. I mean, you know, people from families like ours didn’t go into politics and end up at the top. So, you know, my life story is an indication that it’s possible.

Yes, I’m not going to insult your intelligence, though, and say that there would be no gendered bit or no racism. You would encounter those things. I wish I could tell you, “No, it would all be fine,” but that wouldn’t be honest. And in terms of getting ready for those things, I think it’s just important to think about them in advance. I mean, I’m not someone who’s got personal expertise of dealing with racism, so I can’t give you an insight into that, but I think I can give you an insight into the reactions you get being a woman. And one of the reasons I wanted to write a book was to say to young women, “Go for it, but don’t be naive. You will get gendered reactions. Think about how you’re going to handle them in advance. Forewarned is forearmed.” And I wish I’d had a book like this when I was starting out in politics.

And so I do think you have to nurture, particularly, a sort of sense of self that isn’t hostage to what other people say about you. I speak to a lot of young people in politics – particularly young women – who end up looking at their social media feed and crying over some of the things that are said. And you do have to find a way of kind of distancing who you really are from these casual and cruel critiques by others. So, lesson number one is don’t spend night-times over the social media. If you’re in a professional campaign, you get someone else to do that for you. You don’t do it yourself. But you do have to build some, you know...some barriers, some shielding inside you. And the earlier you can think about that – who you would reach out to for support, how you would deal with sexism, whether you’d call it out, whether you’d try and get someone else to call it out – the better your defensive strategies, then, when the moment comes, the readier you’ll be to go.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I’m interested to know how you respond if and when you are told that.

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

I’m quite a stubborn personality, so I always...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Great!

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

..put it aside. But I think it’s more the subtleties as well. It’s, you know... By example, also, you know, looking in parliament and seeing discrimination not only based on gender, but also race, like, within the parliament. And I think that itself...in itself is quite kind of hurtful, but also, like, it’s discouraging. And I know a lot of my friends who are also people of colour, who are also women, are discouraged from doing those kinds of things, even though I think they have the most brilliant minds. So, I think it’s like, how do we change those subtleties that exist within our country that actually prevent women and people of colour from going into those positions?

HAMISH MACDONALD

And did the experience that Julia Gillard went through as prime minister encourage you to pursue politics, or discourage you?

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

It kind of had a two-way response. It definitely did encourage me in terms of understanding that the Australian population would accept a woman as their leader, and potentially, if we could move forward with that. But also, I think the discrimination that you did face was a bit of a hindrance, but I think the misogyny speech kind of combatted that all, so that was...that was very encouraging.

JULIA GILLARD

Stubborn is a really good character trait. I am a very stubborn person. We should have a...you know, a club – Stubborn People of the World Unite or something. So, stubborn is a good character trait. And the more women who go into it, the more women of colour who go into it, then the easier it ultimately becomes. In the book on Women And Leadership, we interviewed women leaders... And I’m saying ‘we’ because I co-authored it with an African friend of mine, a woman called Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. But one of the women we interviewed was Jacinda Ardern from New Zealand, who was crystal clear that it’s a different thing to lead your nation as prime minister when you’re the third one. You know, Jenny Shipley, Helen Clark, then Jacinda Ardern – that’s a different experience. So, hopefully, by the time you’re ready to go, it won’t be Julia Gillard and a whole lot of men – it will be some women in between, and the nation will be more used to it, and the gendered reactions will be less. And that will make it...not easy, but a different experience than the experiences that others have had.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Satara, I think you’re in Year 12 at the moment.

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

I am.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, how old were you when the misogyny speech happened?

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

Ooh!

HAMISH MACDONALD

Early high school, it would have been.

SATARA UTHAYAKUMARAN

Yes, definitely. It was around early high school. Yeah.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, one of the interesting things is that it’s still got currency. This was the misogyny speech on TikTok.

JULIA GILLARD

(ON RECORDING) I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. I will not. And the government will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man. Not now, not ever. The Leader of the Opposition says that people who hold sexist views and who are misogynists are not appropriate for high office. Well, I hope the Leader of the Opposition has got a piece of paper and he is writing out his resignation, because if he wants to know what misogyny looks like in modern Australia, he doesn’t need a motion in the House of Representatives – he needs a mirror.

DOJA CAT

# I’m a bitch, I’m a boss

# I’m a bitch and a boss

# I’mma shine like gloss... #

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, are you on TikTok?

JULIA GILLARD

To tell you the truth, when that all started, I was getting messages from friends about TikTok. I didn’t even know what TikTok was. I’m staring at these messages. I’m trying to work out what they’re talking about. So, that got me... I’m not on TikTok, but at least that got me looking at TikTok. And I know that it became quite a thing – the misogyny speech.

HAMISH MACDONALD

That was made by a young woman called Abbey. Are you surprised at the fact that it still has some kind of resonance, even now?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, astonished. If anybody had told me, back when I gave the speech, that we’d still be talking about it all these years later, I would have thought that was fanciful beyond belief. I would have been surprised if anybody was talking about it 24 hours later. I thought it would be that day...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Oh, come on. You would have known that it would light things up, didn’t you?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, no, I knew it was... I knew it landed with force in the parliament. You know, I have spent enough time in parliament to know when something’s landed hard in the parliamentary floor. And you’re quite close to the opposition in parliament, and I saw them sort of drop their heads, so I knew it was a powerful speech. But I didn’t expect it to go beyond the chamber, that night’s news, maybe the next morning’s newspapers.

I mean, so little did I expect it to go further, I remember, when I sat down, I turned round to Wayne Swan, my Deputy Prime Minister, who sat behind me, and said, somewhat resentfully, “Oh, now I’ll have to listen to one of theirs speak, and I haven’t got anything to do. I’m going to get some correspondence running so I’ve got something to do.” And Wayne, with this really odd look on his face, was, “You can’t give the kind of ‘I accuse’ speech and then start signing letters!” Like, “What are you talking about?” I’m like, “Oh, that’s really weird.” And then Anthony Albanese came up to me and said, “Oh, I felt really sorry for Abbott when he looked at his watch.” I went, “THAT’S really weird!” So, it was starting to get a little bit unusual before I left the parliament, but even with that, I didn’t think, here we’d be, all these years later.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Do you miss that theatre, the sort of landing the blow, as you describe it?

JULIA GILLARD

In some ways, yes. In some ways, I do. I... You know, there’s kind of a division in feminist thinking about whether, you know, as feminists, we should be looking at power structures and trying to break them down and making them more collective, more caring and sharing, and I respect that theme of feminism, but that hasn’t been my personal theme. You know, what I came to the parliament to do was to show that a woman could stand in that adversarial place and own it. And some days – not every day, but some days – I managed to do that.

And, you know, I would get ready for Question Time, I’d walk my way into the parliamentary chamber, I’d literally feel the second my adrenaline would kick – I would feel the physical response – and I’d be ready to go, and you do have that sort of performer’s instinct. So, yes, I do miss that, but, for every moment like that, there’s, you know, hours and hours and hours of relentless work, of media intrusion into your life, a whole lot of other things that come with parliamentary life – I don’t miss those. I joke that I’ve never got up any morning since and gone, “Gee, I miss the Canberra Press Gallery.” Not once.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright, our next question tonight is from Tessa Fergusson in the studio.

TESSA FERGUSSON

As prime minister, you were attacked and spoken about in a way no other prime minister has been, yet you are the prime minister with the highest rate of legislation passed, even while in a hung parliament. This behaviour is a reflection of how women are treated in society. What is your advice to young women like me on how to handle the public, especially men, that focus on women’s looks and perceived flaws, and not their achievements?

JULIA GILLARD

Well, firstly, I’d say you’re in very good company thinking about this issue. We talked to women leaders about this sort of relentless focus on appearance, and Hillary Clinton had gone so far as to do the maths of getting ready to go campaigning each day when she was running for president – so, an hour in hair and make-up – and she added that up to 24 days of campaigning she lost because she was in hair and make-up. Meanwhile, Donald Trump was emerging looking like Donald Trump without any expec...you know, expectation that that was going to have a quaffed result, if I can use that terminology.

So, it’s frustrating that, you know, so much oxygen’s still taken by appearance. How are we going to get to the end of that? I do think it comes back to this – the more women who are there, the more normal, different, you know, faces, different ways of dressing, different appearances are, the less and less interesting it is. And the...you know, history of countries that have had more than one female leader is that it gets less over time – you know, the, “Oh, my God, she’s a woman – oh, look at that jacket!” You know, that’s kind of intriguing the first time round. Second time round, less intriguing. Third time round, not intriguing at all. So, whilst we still all have to stomach it for a while, I think it’s really important that women get in there and go for it.

And I think there’s a general message here for our society – it’s beyond politics. I think social media drives a...you know, very instant appearance reaction, and I do think we’ve got to debate how much we’re going to allow ourselves to just keep on that bandwagon. You know, I feel like people have spent more than a decade now looking down at their phones, and maybe it’s time to look up at the rest of the world. And people spend so much time judging what others look like and, in my life experience, the least interesting thing about anybody is what they’re wearing. It’s always what they do, what they say, what they think, where they’re going, what their dreams are – they’re the interesting things. So perhaps we can find a way to get to some more of that.

HAMISH MACDONALD

It’s interesting, in your book, though, you sort of say, since politics, you’ve rediscovered this energy and passion and, I think, emotion for feminism, and, yet, you give advice in the book to women – all women, but young women included – that if they are going to go into leadership, they need to think about their appearance. And you talk about the fact that some female leaders adopt this kind of uniform look – wearing the same thing, wearing the same haircut. Is that contradictory?

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah, it is, in some ways. I talk, in the book, about being an analytical feminist for all of my lifetime. I believed, even as a child, that girls and boys were equal, and then I went to university and I learned some things about feminism, and, you know, then I was away, but it was always this very analytical, you know, “We’ve got to do something about gender equality”. And then I was in politics, I had the opportunity to do some things, and so you’d tick boxes, you’d get things done, you’d have that sense of achievement. But I didn’t give myself the time and space to feel the emotion in it – you know, the sort of sisterhood emotion, the collective emotion, the celebration when a woman broke through. And now, in this kind of kinder, gentler phase of my life, I do find myself doing that more, and enjoying that more. And I wish, you know, I could say to women, “Just let yourself feel it, and don’t worry about the rest,” but that wouldn’t be intellectually honest, because politics is a competitive business, you know? You run...

HAMISH MACDONALD

You caution them to be careful about being open about their ambition.

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, well... And I do…do that for good reason. We end up saying in the book, look, make your own choices...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Sure.

JULIA GILLARD

..and, you know, if you don’t want to play the appearance game in any way, if you don’t want to worry about what you look like, if you’re happy to get out the door looking like a female version of Boris Johnson, then that’s fine, you know – that’s your choice – but be aware, people will judge you for it.

On ambition, we present an incredible study from Yale University where they got groups of voters – so two groups, in different rooms, of voters – they got a man and a woman to address each group – they were actually actors, but they were pretending that they were candidates for the Senate – and they used exactly the same pitch lines in their speech. And the lines included things like, “I’m the kind of person who gets things done. I might stand on someone’s toes, but I always get the job done.” For the man, that was a winning line. For the woman, that was like, “Oh! No, not gonna vote for her.”

HAMISH MACDONALD

Mm.

JULIA GILLARD

And that doesn’t mean a woman shouldn’t go out and say something like that, but I want her to know what the likely reaction is, and therefore, make, you know, an educated decision, rather than just be overwhelmed when the reaction is negative.

HAMISH MACDONALD

I want us to get to our next question, but I’ve got to point out that, in the book, you say that if you had your time again, you would have handled gender differently, and the thing you got wrong – the first point you make – is that you didn’t really deal with it up-front, and by the time you felt like you needed to, it was sort of too late. How would you have done it differently?

JULIA GILLARD

I like to imagine... You know, you never get the time machine and you can’t go backwards, and so, you know, I try to make a difference for the future rather than worrying too much about the past. But I do muse to myself that, you know, the second day I was prime minister, the news media was entirely about the jacket I wore. Entirely. Like, not... No-one reported anything I said the second day I was prime minister – it was all about what I was wearing. And I wonder now if, you know, on the third day I was prime minister, if I’d gone out to the Canberra press pack and said, “Is anybody feeling a little bit silly about this? Like, if I’d been a bloke wearing a suit, would you have put that on the news yesterday? ‘Oh, my God, he’s got a charcoal suit on!’ Like, would anybody have covered that? Like, are we going to keep doing this for as long as I’m prime minister?” And I’m not sure what the reaction in the pack would have been – bemusement by some, defensiveness by others – but maybe we would have started a conversation we needed to have.

HAMISH MACDONALD

So when you saw Jacinda Ardern, when she became the opposition leader, point at the journalist and say, “It’s not OK for you to ask a woman about her intention to have a child,” you think you should have done a version of that?

HAMISH MACDONALD

Yes. Yes, you know, to... I should have done it earlier, when you’ve got, you know, kind of, more political capital. You know, later on if you point to it, people will say, “Oh, well, she’s only pointing to that now because she’s under pressure about carbon pricing,” or something, so you would have needed to have done it...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Or saving the Speaker.

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah, that’s right. You would have needed to have done it early. And the other thing, though, I should have done and didn’t – and I didn’t realise it was going to get as mad as it did around gender, but, if I’d known that, I think I would have tried to cultivate some men outside politics and ask them, you know, “When it gets really crazy, I don’t want you to rush in to support me, Julia Gillard, the politician, I don’t even want you to rush in to support the government’s policies – feel free to rush in and say the policies are crazy and I’m not going to vote for the government if that’s what you believe – but could you at least say, ‘We don’t do our politics like this’?”

HAMISH MACDONALD

Like who?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, I think if the CEO of...CEOs of Australia’s top 10 leading companies, the day after the rally with the “Bitch Witch” signs, if they’d done a letter to the newspaper which said, “Look, you know, people can have a variety of views about putting a price on carbon, they’re all legitimate views, we should be having a debate, but we don’t have a debate calling the prime minister of the country with sexist terms,” I think that would have been really noted. But, you know, things like that didn’t happen. And I’m not putting blame on anybody – I mean, I didn’t do it, so, you know, I can’t... I’m not saying, look, you know, I now blame those people for not doing it. I think we all underestimated how it was going to cycle up, and so none of us came in early enough.

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK. I’d love to keep asking you about that, but we need to get to our next question. It’s from Alan Coligado.

ALAN COLIGADO

Thanks, Hamish. Hi, Julia.

JULIA GILLARD

Hi, Alan.

ALAN COLIGADO

In your farewell speech, you said gender doesn’t say...or doesn’t tell the whole story about your time as Prime Minister, but neither does it say nothing. Setting the question of gender aside, do you think that you would have gotten a fairer go as prime minister if you had reached that position in a more conventional way?

JULIA GILLARD

I... Well, I mean, I reached that position in a way that’s certainly been done before in Australian politics – Paul Keating against Bob Hawke, to take one example. I think, inevitably, coming to the prime ministership the way that I did was going to raise a series of questions and it would require answering over time and have some inherent political difficulty around it, and that would have been true as a man or as a woman.

What I think was extra for me is because – a la this university research that I’ve just been discussing – because we’re kind of wired with this sexist stereotyping in the back of all of our brains – I’ve got as much of it as anybody else – this sexist stereotyping that reacts against women that look like they’re seeking power for themselves, I think there was an extra frisson around me coming to power in a party-room situation the way I did against Kevin Rudd. And, you know, I do think, if you go back and look at the reporting of Paul Keating’s victory over Bob Hawke, there wasn’t the same positioning of Paul that there was of me. Now, people can say a variety of things that were different...

HAMISH MACDONALD

Keating had waited a lot longer.

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah, Bob Hawke had been a long-term prime minister, no-one was surprised – Paul had had one ballot, then gone to the backbench, so everybody was ticking down the clock knowing that there would be a second ballot, so no-one was surprised – whereas, in my circumstance, there was a lot of shock factor. So, there were differences, but one – one of those differences – was gender.

And one of the things that’s constantly intriguing to me about looking at all of this is, you know, it’s so complex just pulling out the gender thread. You know, politics never gives you the control test. It almost never gives you the circumstances where a man and a woman are in exactly the same political position and you can analyse exactly the difference gender makes. It’s always more complicated than that. That’s the story of my prime ministership, but gender was a thread. What can I do now? Well, I can leave the writing of who thinks what about what to the history books, and I’m content to do that, but as an advocate and a campaigner, I can try and make a difference to this gender piece for the women who come along in the future.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Where do you draw the line in your own mind, though, between what was gender-based and what was reasonable, justified criticism of you as the prime minister?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, I don’t... I can’t do it as a percentage, because...you know, it varied day to day and in different ways. Look, mostly, I think the criticism of me as prime minister was criticisms of me personally or my policies, which were in the general slipstream of the robust nature of Australian politics, and I don’t resent any of that. You know, I knew what politics was like in this country – it’s not for the faint-hearted. You know, I’d given as much as I’d ever got, so, you know, I’m not going to say that was a problem for me.

But, you know, the positioning around ambition, around, “She’d have no idea what life’s really like because she doesn’t have children,” the, you know, inquiries into my private life, the insults in Question Time and the ones beyond it, which were based on gender... Those things, you know, had an acidity to them which hasn’t historically been present. Now, that doesn’t mean that, you know, harsh words don’t get said about prime ministers, and I’ve said a few myself, but to the extent it was really based in those gendered terms, then that was inappropriate.

Now, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I’m here, I’ve lived a great life, being prime minister was an absolute privilege. If I had a time machine and you told me, “You’ve got to go back now and live every day, and every day’s going to be exactly the same,” I’d go and do it again in a heartbeat. So, you know, I’m an optimist about politics. I’m proud of my political career. I’ve had a great life in politics. And I... You know, at the end... Every day mattered to me and I was pleased and proud to be there. But if I can get that bit out for people in the future, then that would mean something to me for me to really be able to say, not only me being the first, but the things I did afterwards, made a difference for future women.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. Our next question tonight is a video question from Hannah McCann in North Melbourne.

HANNAH McCANN, NORTH MELBOURNE, VIC

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in 2013, you cut payments to single parents, which meant that they were $60 to $100 worse off per week. I grew up in a single-parent family, and that money was just enough to put food on the table every night. I ended up going to university, and I’m now a university lecturer. But I cried the day you announced those cuts. If they had been made when I was a child, I’m not sure I would have ended up where I am now. You passed that legislation on the same day as your infamous misogyny speech, and you call yourself a feminist, but what kind of feminist legacy is it to cut the payments of single parents – mostly mothers – and prevent the futures of children just like me?

JULIA GILLARD

Well, I understand that was a controversial decision, but just to paint the picture for people – and I can understand Helen and many others are never going to see eye to eye with me on this, so I accept that and accept how genuine she is...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I should tell you, it’s Hannah. Just...

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, Hannah. I’m sorry. Hannah. There had been a long-term change in Parenting Payment – it had been made as long ago as the Howard government – about when people would come off Parenting Payment and go onto Newstart. And it was a policy adopted by the Howard government basically because the evidence shows that it is in the interests of children to be in a household with a parent who works, and so it was a welfare-to-work measure.

There had been the grandfathering of people who were then on Parenting Payment when that change was made, and it had applied to all new people. And so, by the time we were in government, the grandfathered percentage was small, and we thought it was fair to equalise treatment, otherwise you were in a situation where families that were identical in every other respect were getting differential payments.

HAMISH MACDONALD

You ended the grandfathering, essentially.

JULIA GILLARD

We ended the grandfathering. Now, you know, I...I get that a lot of people would have said it was fairer to just leave the grandfathering, and I respect that. Never gonna persuade people about it. But we didn’t do it from some impulse which was anti-single-parents or -children, and I think, in a fair weighing of all of the things that we did to support families that had disadvantage, and particularly the education of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, means that we can say that we made a real difference. So, it’s for people to judge.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Do you think your position on that and your...your claimed position on...on paid parental leave tarnishes your record as far as your...your feminist outlook is concerned?

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, I...I don’t think feminism’s, you know, a badge, and you get one if you can say, “I’ve done these things and I’ve never done those things.” You know, it’s... Life’s complicated. I’ve always been animated by the belief that men and women are equal and that, if there are barriers that are holding women back, then they should be cleared out of the way. I’ve tried to be as true to that belief as possible throughout all of my political life and the years since. Am I the perfect feminist? No, I’m not. Am I a guilty feminist from time to time? Have I got things wrong? Undoubtedly. But, you know, I’ve always tried to hold true to that.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. Our next question tonight comes from Kate Rowe in the studio.

KATE ROWE

Hi, Julia. I’ll just preface this by saying that I’m what’s called a 78er, which meant I was in the first Mardi Gras in 1978 – I was 26 – and in the riot that ensued, and I was arrested, and I was bashed, I was jailed, and I was fighting for my rights to be...as a lesbian, to be who I am. So that follows on that whilst I did, and I still do, admire and respect you for your time as prime minister and as a member of parliament, it still puzzles me why you chose not to support same-sex marriage. It may have saved a lot of us in the LGBTQI community much abuse and heartache with the postal survey had you chosen to be more supportive at your time in office. And do you hold the same view now – that a marriage is between a man and a woman?

JULIA GILLARD

I voted Yes for same-sex marriage in the plebiscite when it came out. When the same-sex marriage discussions were happening within the Labor Party... So you would, I think, recall, originally, the Labor Party – at one national conference – said that it was going to go for civil unions, and then, at a national conference after that, then endorsed same-sex marriage. I thought there was a discussion to be had around the status of religious marriage in our society and whether that was...that was going to be the kind of dominant way we looked at marriage. So, whether we could have changed the terms of the discussion so that what the law did was different from the traditional conception of marriage.

You know, I’m not someone who’s ever been married, and I thought we could have this more broad debate about what civil unions could...could mean. Now, as history records, obviously, mine was ultimately viewed as an eccentric position – maybe one left over from my late-1970s and early-1980s feminism where, if you’d said to many women in that era, you know, “What you’re aiming for is to get married,” whether they were straight or gay, they would have looked at you with horror like, “What on Earth are you talking about? That’s not the kind of relationships we want to see. We want to see a different world, a more equal world, not one that brings this institution with all its traditional baggage into new circumstances.”

But, you know, it was my own position. The march of human history obviously took the tide on towards same-sex marriage, and when the decision was there to be made through a plebiscite, I certainly voted Yes. I know that there are some people who think, well, if I’d brought same-sex marriage legislation into the parliament, maybe we would have had same-sex marriage earlier. My political judgement is that wouldn’t have happened, because, as you would recall, we were a minority government. At that stage, I think the Liberal Party would have bloc-voted against same-sex marriage – they wouldn’t have had a conscience vote or a free vote. It would have become a partisan issue in the real hurly-burly of politics. And you remember how hard the hurly-burly was then – whatever one can say about Tony Abbott, he’s a formidable campaigner, and I think this would have been an issue that he brought his formidable campaigning skills to. And that would not have been in the long-term interests of anybody, to have same-sex marriage in that highly partisan debate. So, I actually don’t think we would have got it through the parliament at that point.

HAMISH MACDONALD

You did say at the time, though, that you found yourself on the conservative side in that question, and you pointed to...to your own family upbringing. You said, “We believed in lots of things that are old-fashioned. We believed in politeness and thrift and fortitude, and doing duty and discipline. There are things that were part... These were things that were part of my upbringing. They’re part of who I am today.” And you said that you thought the Marriage Act and marriage being between a man and a woman had a special status.

JULIA GILLARD

Mm.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Does that...? Is that different to what you’re saying now?

JULIA GILLARD

No. I think... Well, certainly all of those values were ones that I was brought up in...brought up with. I was brought up in a traditional household, but one that had an outlook for me and my sister that I think has told the rest of our lives, which is that our parents wanted us to aim high and to get a great education. We were certainly never taught that, you know, boys were in advance of girls. We were never taught that our future would be as, you know, wives and homemakers. We were urged to dream big. And a lot of women of my generation weren’t taught that in their family home. So, traditional values in many senses, but a sense of gender equality.

And...and this, you know... The view about marriage I had out of my family home is one that I almost – well, is ‘rebel’ the right word? It’s pretty close to the right word – rebelled against once I came to feminism in university. You know, if you’d said to 20-year-old Julia Gillard, “You’re going to walk down an aisle in a white dress while your father gives you away,” I would have said, “Like, really? I don’t think so.” And, you know, that never happened. So, you know...

HAMISH MACDONALD

I just want to go back to Kate. What do you make of the response?

KATE ROWE

Look, I decided not to get married when I was 12, even before I came out. But I absolutely defend the right for anybody, as Jacinda Ardern did in New Zealand, that a marriage was between two people. Right there, there’s your answer. Simple as. And so... you know, talking about the religious question – which now has exploded, with what...with the legislation that went through – I think it’s a bit of a furphy, because it’s not about religion, it’s about...

HAMISH MACDONALD

So, do you buy the response?

KATE ROWE

No.

HAMISH MACDONALD

OK.

KATE ROWE

With all due respect, I do feel that it’s...it’s...it’s just about two people having the same rights as any other two people, whatever their gender.

JULIA GILLARD

Oh, no, and I...I absolutely... This is why I voted Yes in the plebiscite. But I did...I did have an aspiration, I guess, informed by that feminism from my university days to see if we could have another kind of debate. And, no, we didn’t have...we didn’t end up having it, and it became a...you know, the binary choice – “Do you vote for marriage equality or do you vote against it?” And given that opportunity, I voted for it.

KATE ROWE

I understand what you’re saying. I totally understand what you’re saying. But the society at the moment, with LGBTQI, is that a lot of people want to get married, for whatever reason.

JULIA GILLARD

Mm.

KATE ROWE

And the numbers of people that got married after it passed – just...the marriage registry just went through the roof. And it was... And it was big business. So, you know...

JULIA GILLARD

And...and a number of my friends did...

KATE ROWE

Well, history will see, I think. You know, I just really respect you, I just don’t think that’s... I don’t buy that.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Thanks very much for your question, Kate. Our next question tonight is from Pauline Wright.

PAULINE WRIGHT

Yes, the legal profession was really shocked by the Dyson Heydon story, yet many women lawyers have experienced sexual harassment, as many surveys have shown, and it’s a key driver of women leaving the profession. But reporting numbers are really low, in some states as many as nil – that’s the formal reporting – mainly because of fear of reprisals. As a former lawyer yourself, what’s your advice to the legal profession? What can we do to address sexual harassment?

HAMISH MACDONALD

And I should just note that, Pauline, you’re the president of the Law Council of Australia.

PAULINE WRIGHT

Yes, I am.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Yeah.

JULIA GILLARD

I, last year, was invited to launch an international report that had been put together by the International Bar Association. And they’d conducted surveys in countries around the world of lawyers in...you know, firms of solicitors, lawyers at the bar, courtrooms, you know, judges’ associates and the like. And they were inquiring into sexual harassment and bullying. And the statistics that came back, and the examples that came back, were just...you know, amazing, disgusting, disheartening. For every statistic, they put a sort of snapshot of something that someone said in the surveys, and it just... Enough to make you cry, to see what people had gone through.

And when I got asked to launch that report, and read it so that I could put my speech together, the first time I read it, I thought, “I’m... God, I’m really shocked by that. And my experience in the law hadn’t had any of that.” And then, when I read it again and thought more about it, I thought, “No, of course, it’s like this.” Because the law is still one of those professions where networks and patronage and people with power, like partners and senior counsel, putting their favour with people who are up and coming means everything. And as we know from Hollywood and Weinstein, and all the rest of it, when you have those kinds of power dichotomies – someone who can literally make or break someone else’s career through a statement – then that will be misused.

And I think, on the one hand, we’ve got to get reporting structures right so that, you know, people can come forward... Sexual harassment, bullying – it will be predominantly women, but not always women – can come forward and make a complaint, and be heard and respectfully treated, and get remedies. But I think, beyond that, we need to do a whole lot of things that are more proactive about breaking down those power relationships. You know, otherwise, you’re not going to have the sort of protective circumstances that are going to keep people safe.

Now, how do you do that? You know, this wasn’t done as an anti-sexual-harassment measure. It was done as a gender diversity measure, but it’s something I had an insight into through my work in London. You know, historically, in big litigation law firms, you’ve got the one or two blockbuster cases each year, and if you’ve worked on one of the blockbuster cases, then you’re most likely to come up for a promotion the next year. And the way that the teams were getting put together for the blockbuster cases was the partner who was going to run them would say, “Right, well, I know who I want on my team. I want, you know, that one, that one, that one, that one.” And they were tending to pick people who were like a younger version of themselves, which is pretty natural human behaviour. That is, they were tending to pick men because, overwhelmingly, these older lawyers were men.

When we worked with that firm, there was an intervention, where, instead of the partner putting the team together, an independent person put the team together. A more diverse team, therefore, came out of it. You didn’t get the same potential misuse of power – you know, an older man saying to a younger woman, “You can get to work on this blockbuster case, but only if...”, you know, in a sexual harassment situation. And I think those clever things that break down power relationships, while still getting the work done, are part of the solution in a profession like law.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Our next question is a video from Marco Forstner in Brunswick Heads.

MARCO FORSTNER, BRUNSWICK HEADS, NSW

Ms Gillard, who has been the best prime minister since you left office – Rudd, Abbott, Turnbull, or Morrison?

JULIA GILLARD

Um, well, I’m always a Labor person, so a Labor prime minister beats all, so Kevin.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Oh, come on, that’s a cop-out. He wasn’t there for long after you.

JULIA GILLARD

Definitely Kevin. If I’m forced to choose from the other side, um... well, it’s not going to be Tony. It’s not going to be Tony. I would, um...

Look, I get on well, personally, with Malcolm Turnbull. I’m still in contact with Malcolm Turnbull. We speak on the phone from time to time. So...I’ve got a soft spot for Malcolm. I am working productively, though, with Scott Morrison. He’s been very decent to Beyond Blue and to the mental health sector. I think he is very genuine about wanting to make a difference on the suicide rates. And, you know, I respect someone who can come at an issue like that with bipartisanship, and we’ve had some very good discussions on it.

I’ve worked very closely with Greg Hunt on it, too. And if you’d asked me, in my days in parliament, as I used to get up as prime minister while both Scott and Greg would have been heckling from the other side, whether I could have imagined a day that I would have worked easily with either of them, I would have said no, but we do work easily together.

HAMISH MACDONALD

That was a pretty good answer. You named pretty much all of them other than Tony Abbott.

JULIA GILLARD

I kind of left Tony out.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. We’re a bit over time, but one last question from Tom Reilly.

TOM REILLY

So, my question is, what role do you think former prime ministers should play in Australian society after they leave office?

JULIA GILLARD

I think it’s important to get out of the day-to-day political commentary. I’ve done that. I think it’s the right thing to do because you’ve got to let the current generation get on with it. If they need your advice, there’s, you know, these things called telephones. They can always, you know, use one of them and speak to you about it. They don’t need to read it in the newspaper, or hear about it on TV. So, don’t be in the contemporary political debate.

Try and use the skills for things you’re still passionate about, and can do some good in society. You know, people come out of the prime ministership different ages, different expectations about what the rest of their life’s going to be about. But you come out with a set of skills that I think you can put to good use. So, “Do more, talk less,” would probably be the motto. Even though I’m here on Q+A talking quite a lot tonight...I don’t make a habit of it.

HAMISH MACDONALD

And go easy on social media?

JULIA GILLARD

Yeah, go... Oh, I mean, social media, I think, is a good vehicle in the sense... I mean, I put out things on social media that I think are important, but I... Look, I don’t think it does anybody any good, whether you’re a former prime minister or not, to be, you know, in the back and forth on social media. I think it does everybody’s head in.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Alright. That’s all we’ve got time for tonight. Would you please give a round of applause to Julia Gillard?

JULIA GILLARD

Thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you.

HAMISH MACDONALD

Thanks, also, to you in the live studio audience. We’ve got some music to go out on tonight, which we’re very, very excited about. Thank you to all of you watching on iview, as well. Goodnight to you.

But we’re leaving you with a live performance from Megan Washington, joined by Mahalia Barnes, Elana Stone and Ngaiire, with a special rendition of Kiss Me Like We’re Going To Die, from her latest album. Enjoy.