Julia Gillard Quotes

It was inconceivable to me that the kind of anti-Labor work that Kevin had been involved in – the destabilisation, the leaking – would be rewarded by the leadership.

I could hear the forces massing. I was very keen to make sure that I got our big reforms done before those forces could reach a critical point.

I indicate to the Leader of the Opposition that the government is not dying of shame—my father did not die of shame. What the Leader of the Opposition should be ashamed of is his performance in this parliament and the sexism he brings with it.

I was very conscience that if you put even your toe on this very sticky piece of paper, then you would be caught on it.

There is nothing that should lead you to expect bastardry of that magnitude. Hard things happen; a hard thing happened to Malcolm Turnbull, a hard thing happened to Bob Hawke, a hard thing happened Kim Beazley, a hard thing happened to Kevin Rudd, a hard thing happened to me. You can still make choices on how you conduct yourself.

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 does not need a motion in the House of Representatives; he needs a mirror.

It did seem to me that tomorrow you could wake up to anything, and that there just are no rules anymore.

I don't think it would have been possible ... You always have choices, yes, but I don't think there was any way of stuffing the genie back into the bottle.

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

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.

Now I understand for Mr Downer and other members of the chattering classes in the Liberal Party: they might think what qualifies you to know about national security, is you sit in a minister's office typing press releases all of your lives, with the greatest risk to your personal safety being a papercut – Mr Downer might think that's appropriate; well I do not.

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.

Tactics hadn't gone [Rudd's] way – I had taken a view about something else forming the issue of the day – and after the tactics meeting broke up he very physically stepped into my space, and it was quite a bullying encounter. It was a menacing, angry, performance.

I thought that, that side of [Rudd's] character – the very anxious, 'I must be in the media, I must shine in Parliament today' – would fall away when he became Labor leader and there was no more fighting for the spotlight; the spotlight was well and truly on him.

It's a cute project to work on.