Julia Gillard Quotes

I always had this long shadow from the way in which I became Prime Minister, and active steps were taken basically every day of my prime ministership to have that shadow become darker and darker, not lighter and lighter.

Will the misogynists and the nut jobs on the internet continue to circulate them? Yes, they will. And it wouldn't matter what I said and it wouldn't matter what documents were produced and it wouldn't matter what anybody else said, they will pursue this claim for motivations of their own which are malicious and not in any way associated with the facts.

Here he [Abbott] is, trying to fudge one way and fudge the other; This morning he went out and accused me of a crime. Back it up or shut up.

Kevin was very fragile in the face of criticism including the implied criticism that comes with bad polls or bad news stories.

It's a big emotional thing to do, to challenge the leadership of your political party. There is nothing pleasant about it, there's nothing fun about it. It's quite a horrible gut-wrenching process.

I suggest Australians rush to their kitchens and check that their spoons aren't bent after that performance.

"There was no cataclysmic moment of revelation, but as I moved into my 20's, doubts grew and then overwhelmed." ...

It is not normal for a Deputy Prime Minister to end up running a Prime Minister's diary, chairing staff meetings. It's not normal for a Deputy Prime Minister to be trying to manage so that quality speeches are given.

I was very offended personally when the Leader of the Opposition, as Minister of Health, said, and I quote, “Abortion is the easy way out.” I was very personally offended by those comments. You said that in March 2004, I suggest you check the records. I was also very offended on behalf of the women of Australia when in the course of the carbon pricing campaign the Leader of the Opposition said, 'What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing.' Thank you for that painting of women's roles in modern Australia!

The Leader of the Opposition says, 'Do something'; well he could do something himself if he wanted to deal with sexism in this parliament. He could change his behaviour, he could apologise for all his past statements and he could apologise for standing next to signs describing me as a witch and a bitch—terminology now objected to by the frontbench of the opposition. He could change standards himself if he sought to do so. But we will see none of that from the Leader of the Opposition, because on these questions he is incapable of change. He is capable of double standards but incapable of change.

I don't support the idea of a big Australia with arbitrary targets of, say, a 40 million-strong Australia or a 36 million-strong Australia. We need to stop, take a breath and develop policies for a sustainable Australia... I support a population that our environment, our water, our soil, our roads and freeways, our busses, our trains and our services can sustain.

We have got to get to grips with this, and we have to ask ourselves as feminists a fairly difficult and deep question about whether we have in our rhetoric and campaigning for gender equality been as careful as we should be to explain that actually gender equality will be better for everyone.

You've got to gather yourself, you've got to give the speech, go see the Governor-General, do all of that. And then you get to have a few drinks with friends, so that's not that hard.

I don’t see what alternate reality was possible other than the one’s we lived through. So I think people are really wistfully hoping for something that was never going to be.

We cannot have the government or the Labor party go to the next election with a person leading the party and a person floating around as the potential alternative leader. Anybody who enters the ballot tonight should do it on the following conditions: that if you win you're Labor leader, that if you lose you retire from politics.