Ambition plus loyalty fast track to the top

Julia Gillard. Photo / Getty Images

SYDNEY - Forthright, personable and formidably bright, Julia Gillard always aspired to the top political job, but she never expected - or, possibly, wanted - to be handed it so early.

Loyalty has been one of her trademarks, and as Kevin Rudd's deputy and most loyal ally she was entrusted by him with the crucial portfolios of education, employment and industrial relations, to implement the policy promises that swept Labor to power in 2007.

That meant a massive workload for the Deputy Prime Minister, but the 48-year-old Gillard has never been afraid of hard work - or lacked determination.

The former university activist and trade union lawyer unsuccessfully sought Labor preselection three times before finally entering Parliament in 1998, the same year as Rudd. She became deputy party leader in 2006, when Rudd ousted Kim Beazley.

Smart and ambitious, she fended off many insults during her rapid political rise; her political opponents called her a union stooge and a communist, and the maverick Liberal backbencher Bill Heffernan accused her of being "deliberately barren" - claiming that because she was childless, she was unfit for leadership. Amid widespread public outrage, he was forced to issue a grovelling apology.

Regarded as Labor's star parliamentary performer, Gillard appears, for the most part, cool and unflappable. However, she has a fiery nature to match her striking red hair, according to her mother, Moira, who told an ABC documentary this month: "Julia is very easygoing, but when something does upset her, just look out. She gets into a temper, just like a sleeping volcano." In 2006 she was ejected from Parliament for calling Tony Abbott, who was then Health Minister, a "snivelling grub".

Welsh-born Gillard was 4 years old when her family, from the mining town of Barry, emigrated to Australia under the "Ten Pound Pom" assisted passage scheme. They settled in Adelaide, where her father, John, worked as a psychiatric nurse and her mother cooked at a Salvation Army home for women.

A straight-A student, she took on a physics teacher at school, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, heading a delegation that criticised him for focusing on male-oriented examples such as motorbike engines. In 1979 Gillard embarked on a law and arts degree at the University of Adelaide, where she was a student representative on the University Council and became heavily involved in campus politics.

Elected vice-president, then president, of the Australian Union of Students, she took two years out of her studies and moved to Melbourne. Her dedication to politics was apparent. An old friend, Julie Ligeti, told the Age: "We were all trying to work out how we were going to buy our first car, or which share house we were going to live in. Julia had this other thing happening. She was beginning her career in politics."

After qualifying, Gillard joined Slater & Gordon as an industrial lawyer, representing unions against employers, and became the firm's youngest partner, at 29.

In 1996 she became chief of staff to the Victorian opposition leader, John Brumby, before being preselected for the Melbourne seat of Lalor two years later.

As opposition spokesman on immigration and health, Gillard impressed her colleagues. But the sexist jibes continued. She was roundly mocked after a photo-shoot in her home revealed a spotless kitchen and an empty fruitbowl. She admitted she rarely cooks. There was more controversy in 2008 when her partner, Tim Mathieson, a hairdresser, was appointed a voluntary men's health ambassador.

Well respected by voters, and popular among her departmental staff, Gillard has long known that, as far as Australian politics is concerned, she is looked up to as a trailblazer.

As the country's first female Prime Minister, and after having been appointed in such extraordinary circumstances, not to mention so close to an election, the pressure on her will be intense. A member of Rudd's "kitchen cabinet" - the gang of four (her, Rudd, Wayne Swan and Lindsay Tanner) who reportedly laid down key policies - it will be hard for her to dissociate herself from her predecessor.

But she is as well equipped as anyone to rise to the challenge. As she observed after Labor's election victory: "Politics is not for the faint-hearted, and I think I am a resilient person."