' 'I was Prime Minister for three years and three days.Three years and three days of resilience.Three years and three days of changing the nation.Three years and three days for you to judge.'
'On Wednesday 23rd June 2010, with the government in turmoil, Julia Gillard asked then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd for a leadership ballot.
'The next day, Julia Gillard became Australia's 27th Prime Minister, and our first female leader. Australia was alive to the historic possibilities. Here was a new approach for a new time.
'It was to last three extraordinary years.
'This is Julia Gillard's chronicle of that turbulent time - a strikingly candid self-portrait of a political leader seeking to realise her ideals. It is her story of what it was like - in the face of government in-fighting and often hostile media - to manage a hung parliament, build a diverse and robust economy, create an equitable and world-class education system, ensure a dignified future for Australians with disabilities, all while attending to our international obligations and building strategic alliances for our future. This is a politician driven by a sense of purpose - from campus days with the Australian Union of Students, to a career in the law, to her often gritty, occasionally glittering rise up the ranks of the Australian Labor Party.
'Refreshingly honest, peppered with a wry humour and personal insights, Julia Gillard does not shy away from her mistakes, admitting freely to errors, misjudgements, and policy failures as well as detailing her political successes. Here is an account of what was hidden behind the resilience and dignified courage Gillard showed as prime minister - her view of the vicious hate campaigns directed against her, and a reflection on what it means - and what it takes - to be a woman leader in contemporary politics.' (Publication abstract)
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'Genres of written communication do not take place in a vacuum; rather they are fundamentally influenced by historical context and socio-political circumstance. In recent years, the political memoir genre in Australia has moved away from its tradition of personalised narrative towards a more assertive mode of historical representation. Drawing on empirical and oral history research, this article examines recent alterations in the genre as manifest in six political memoirs produced by senior members of the Rudd–Gillard Labor government. I conclude that Australia's embittered and combative political culture has driven changes in the aesthetic and epistemological features of the genre itself. This research demonstrates that the “trust deficit” embedded in contemporary democracies is manifest not only in the daily ephemera of public discourse, but also in long-form modes and genres of political communication.' (Publication abstract)
'The Sydney Writers’ Festival sometimes feels like an election campaign because, just as political parties these days seem to deliver their policy launches a week or so out from the election, there already appears to be a month’s worth of Festival events stretching through May even though Mohsin Hamid is not due to deliver the Opening Address until 19 May. It is probably fitting then that an ex-Prime Minister kicked off events on May Day 2015. Linda Adair and Lucinda Adair-Roberts look back on Julia Gillard’s conversation with Jamila Rizvi.'
