Australia reacts to its first female PM

Julia Gillard, Australia's first woman prime minister. Photo / Getty Images

Julia Gillard has become Australia's first woman prime minister after Kevin Rudd stepped down to avoid a Labor party caucus vote.

Here's a sample of the Australian media's reaction to the move.

Dennis Shanahan, political editor at The Australian, says Rudd's decision to step down was the right thing for the party.

"Kevin Rudd - the man everyone said was not a party man - has done the best thing possible for the Labor Party and avoided a leadership ballot," Shanahan wrote.

"Faced with an overwhelmingly and humiliating defeat the Prime Minister decided to pull the plug at the last minute and stop the hurt for Labor."

Simon Benson of the The Daily Telegraph in Sydney says many didn't understand how Gillard was pushed into the spotlight.

"Most MPs realised that they would not win an election with Kevin Rudd as leader but were missing someone with the cojones to bring it on.

"In the end that task came down to powerbroker Bill Shorten. He and elements of the NSW Right gave her no choice. If she didn't put her hand up, someone else would."

The Daily Telegraph also offered one of the best explanations on what led Julia Gillard to move against Rudd

"The final straw for Julia Gillard came early yesterday. Angered by a morning newspaper report leaked from the Prime Minister's office, questioning her loyalty, she called senior powerbroker and fellow Victorian MP Bill Shorten. She wanted to know what to do."

The Sydney Morning Herald lamented the rise and fall of Kevin Rudd.

"Just a year ago," it reported, "Mr Rudd rivalled Bob Hawke as Australia's most popular leader. But he now joins Mr Hawke as the only other Labor prime minister dumped by his party."

Political commentator, David Penberthy, is in South Africa for the World Cup but filed for The Punch on the Rudd-Gillard leadership battle.

His piece, Arise Julia Gillard, the Tim Cahill of Politics, sets out clearly why Kevin Rudd had become a liability.

"The two areas of greatest weakness for Kevin Rudd are the Julia Gillard's two greatest strengths. They are communication and policy implementation - kind of crucial in politics, needless to say. Rudd is a very poor communicator. He has admitted as much himself. Gillard in contrast is a terrific communicator."

The Punch is also live blogging on the leadership battle here.

Guy Rundle at Cirkey.com.au pulled no punches in his analysis of the era of 'Ruddism'.

"It is not that Rudd has been too left or too right overall - it is that he's been both, and usually the wrong one in every situation. There are good compromises and bad compromises, as the man said, and Rudd appears to have plumped largely for the latter. But that does not get to the core of Ruddism, and the political and philosophical contradictions that generated its strategic failures."